


The Golden Bird

by pierrot_dreams



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Historical, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abuse, Codependency, Dark, Dubious Consent, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Epic, Forced Prostitution, Gang Rape, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Novel, Oral Sex, PTSD, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Underage, Physical Abuse, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Powerlessness, Prostitution, Psychological Trauma, Punishment, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, References to Suicide, Sexual Abuse, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Torture, Trauma, True Love, Underage Prostitution, Underage Sex, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 04:10:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 41
Words: 108,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/769830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pierrot_dreams/pseuds/pierrot_dreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the reign of a corrupt king, two old friends meet again one night in an upscale brothel. One is a pleasure-slave; the other, reluctant heir to the King's adviser. They find themselves trapped in a dangerous game of power and politics that will test their allegiances to both the coming revolution and to each other.</p><p>(You can also read this story at pierrot-dreams.livejournal.com)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains themes of institutionalized slavery, forced prostitution, dub-con, non-con, angst and past abuse. Also, lots of sex. Consider yourself warned.

“Have you had the Golden Bird?”

Robert stirred from vague, drifting half-dreams at the voice which, though familiar, he could not place. There was a warm weight on his chest. Further examination proved it to be a young man who uttered muffled murmurs of contentment as a hand—Robert’s own, he realized detachedly—stroked his dark hair. Robert realized with the same sense of detachment that he had no idea where he was or how he had gotten here.

Interesting.

With considerable effort, as his brain seemed to have been slammed repeatedly into a wall, Robert wound back his memory.

He had stumbled into Paradiso unmasked and wine-drunk on the heels of Bacchanal, following a youth in a gilded cat’s guise who was quickly lost among the revelers. A gloved hand had snatched at his sleeve. The man attached emerged from the mob, grinning under a sequined domino. Did Robert know him? He’d followed him anyway, stumbling through glittering throngs of merrymakers, fuzzyheaded with booze and lust in equal measure. The man had pulled him into the doorway of some disreputable establishment and kissed him there, his mouth tasting like whiskey Robert hadn’t drunk and cigars Robert hadn’t smoked. There had been something illicitly intimate about these private details communicated through a stranger’s kiss in a stranger’s doorway, and too soon Robert had been on his knees before the man, breathing in the rich smell of his arousal as he fumbled to unlace his breeches. There had been an interruption then—a sudden swarm of familiar faces under ornate masks, men he knew and loathed from Court or College, jeering and congratulatory. Robert immediately recognized their leader as Francis despite the painted chimera mask that hid most of his face.

And then suddenly the man in the sequined domino wasn’t a stranger at all, but Adrian, Adrian all along, and Robert didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or bless the gods.

The crowd of friends had borne them to some unsavory tavern or another (Robert remembered Adrian’s hand in his), and there had been more wine consumed, and their merriment had swelled like a tide and caught other celebrants in its surge until the tavern was bursting with noise and laughter and dissipation. A pretty boy had sat on Robert’s lap and offered to commit certain acts upon his lordship that would make a whore blush, but Adrian was a warm presence beside him and Robert had shoved the boy away with nothing more than a few harsh words for his trouble.

A snuff box had been produced from the folds of Francis’s cloak, full not of snuff but something else, a silvery powder that Francis, laughing, tipped into their drinks. It had left a metallic sting in Robert’s mouth, quickly soothed by Adrian’s tongue.

And then the world had melted into a warm confusion of light and sound. Robert’s eyes became carnival mirrors, refractive and distorted; images had to swim through a sea of warped glass to meet his brain. There were a few distinct memories of that time. The proprietor of the tavern, big ruddy face twisted into an expression of mingled fury and apprehension as he suggested, as politely as he could manage, that perhaps their lordships would be moving along now that they had broken all the chairs. Adrian, eyes like dark stars behind his domino. The febrile breath of Bacchanal against Robert’s face as they exited the pillaged tavern, smelling of booze and sex and something burning. Adrian, dragging him into an alley to kiss feverishly. Hailing a shabby hansom, coins clinking into the cabby’s hand. Adrian, moaning as Robert fondled his cock through his breeches. A palace rearing up out of the spangled crowd. And Adrian, and Adrian, and Adrian.

More powder, then, and after that—nothing.

“The Golden Bird?” Robert repeated groggily, voice sounding strangely languid to his ears.

“You really must get out more, cousin,” Francis replied. “We’ve all had him. He’s the toast of Paradiso—the most beautiful whore of our age. Wine?” He proffered a bottle.

Robert shook his head, then winced as the headache he hadn’t noticed until now began to throb in protest. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, dislodging the man who lay across his lap—Lord Adrian, of course, gods damn everything—who made a noise of displeasure.

Robert was sitting on a low velvet chaise in some sort of hall, he saw now. It looked like the formal parlor of one of the ostentatious palazzos built in the Commerce District by nouveau riche merchants, with ornate woodwork, velvet-paneled walls, and a low ceiling featuring a garish frieze of gamboling cherub boys. Of course, no merchant’s wife would have received company under cherub boys engaging in the creative acts of sodomy that these were currently enjoying.

Robert averted his eyes from the scene of merry cherub debauchery and looked around the room. It was decorated in the modern baroque fashion, gaudy and ridiculous; about thirty other men, masked all and shifty-eyed with it, reclined in postures of eager anticipation on similar chaises or long couches. Their masks were as much for anonymity as for tradition, Robert knew. No respectable man in his right mind would enter Paradiso during Bacchanal without taking steps to disguise himself. Robert saw a saucer-eared jackal, two greenmen twined around each other like living vines, a grinning skull with teeth of diamonds, winking white-faced harlequins, a peacock with a trailing mantle of iridescent plumage. Pleasure-slaves draped in red and silver gauze flitted amongst the couches carrying trays of liquor and lubricants.

There was no doubt that this was a brothel, and apparently a very fine one indeed.

“This is the Harlequin, isn’t it,” Robert said resignedly, already knowing the answer.

“Very  _good_ , darling.” Francis lit a cigarette. “You’ve been paying attention after all.”

Robert gritted his teeth and tried, with a nearly inhuman exercise of will, not to strangle his cousin. So, to make a brief inventory of the night’s events thus far, he had been drugged with some sort of demonic pixie dust, taken to the most infamous whorehouse in the Isles, and somehow reconciled with Lord Adrian, the man who had given him a venereal disease and left him for a baronet. Right. Wonderful. Another wildly successful night for Lord d'Argent.

Robert buried his head in his hands and groaned.

“If you’re going to indulge yourself in tedious lamentations of regret, do have the decency to wait until after the show,” Francis said serenely. “These tickets were not cheap, you know.”

For the first time, Robert noticed the stage. Its curtains were drawn, their canvas painted with a swirling abstraction of color that resolved into men’s bodies entwined in orgy. It wasn’t difficult to guess what sort of show would take place in such a setting and on such a stage, and it certainly didn’t strain the imagination that Francis would have tickets.

Before Robert could storm out of the brothel in righteous indignation (as, he assured himself, he almost certainly would have done) the lights in the room dimmed all at once. Adrian stirred beside him. The show was about to begin.

Robert knew the pantomime as soon as the curtain rose. It was a satyr play, one he’d seen acted a thousand times before from dockside hovels to flash gentleman’s theaters. The set was a forest wrought with lush silk-leaved vegetation and a background of painted stars. Beautiful nymph-boys posed in gilded niches, the sort adorned with idols in temple. The nymph-boys were naked but for their masks and heavy whores’ jewelry. Robert’s mouth went dry.

The satyr emerged from the trees. He was the sort of strapping monstrosity favored for satyrs, massive as oak with limbs as thrawn with muscle. His mask had a mantle of black horsehair that tumbled over his broad shoulders; its horns looked as though they’d been had from a real ram, great horrible things smeared with red greasepaint. The mask was so realistic and the man so grotesque it took Robert’s mind a moment to recognize where mask ended and man began. It took another moment to realize that the comically large phallus standing erect between the man’s thick, hairy thighs was his own organ, not a wooden facsimile. Adrian made a murmur of appreciation.

The satyr grinned at the audience as he fondled his massive testicles. Robert found the placket of his breeches become uncomfortably tight. Adrian’s hand creeping up his thigh was not helping matters in the least.

The satyr soon became bored of masturbating and began to dance around the stage, belled slave-collar jingling an accompaniment. He twitched his hips so that the goats’-tail plug in his ass swung from side to side. Adrian squeezed Robert’s thigh and bit his neck, breath hot and whiskey-sweet.

The satyr caught sight of the nymphs and leaped back in mock surprise. He crept forward, eyeing the nymphs with unmistakably lecherous expression, and then gave the audience a broad wink. Laughter rippled through the assembled. Robert’s hand had somehow ended up between Adrian’s legs, and he was gently kneading the stiff flesh he found there.

The satyr strutted up and down, inspecting each of the nymphs with the air of a general reviewing his troops. Suddenly he sprung forward and, grasping one about the waist, pulled the boy from his niche. The nymph feigned struggle and, when the satyr held fast, pretended to swoon away from fear. The satyr threw him to the ground and began to gleefully hump his prone body. Robert tightened his grip. Adrian moaned.

“Are you hard for me or for him?” Robert murmured to Adrian.

Adrian’s smile was as bright as Robert remembered it. “Always for you, darling,” he whispered, pressing his body against Robert’s. “Always for you.”

The satyr soon tired of the nymph and tossed him carelessly back into his niche. For all his rutting, the satyr hadn’t come; his organ bounced merrily as he grabbed another boy and bent him over. Robert slid his hand down the front of Adrian’s breeches.

_I’ll wager your baronet never made you feel like this_ , Robert thought.

The act was repeated as the satyr went down the line, each boy pretending to struggle before submitting. Robert stroked Adrian slowly, enjoying the way he writhed and whimpered. The feel of Adrian moving under his hand, the masked men touching themselves through their trousers, the satyr’s cock sliding over the nymph’s smooth thighs—it went to Robert’s head like wine. Francis was watching him, dark eyes glittering behind the chimera mask. He heard Grandfather’s voice— _I’ll hand the family name over to that prancing fop of a grand-nephew before I see you turn out like your father_. The nymph cried out in pain. In Robert’s mind a woman kicked up her legs, petticoats swirling in a dizzying tumult of organza. How old was the nymph? Eleven, twelve? The woman’s face, painted like a doll’s.  _You look just like your father, Robbie love. Just like._ Wetness dribbled between his fingers. He saw a face, painted like a doll’s. A little boy with violet eyes whispered,  _Promise you won’t forget me._

“No!” Robert choked, lurching to his feet. “Not you. Not you.” The phantom danced in front of him and Robert staggered towards it, clawing at the air.

_Promise?_ Luca’s ghost whispered.

“Robert?”

Robert opened his eyes. He was sitting on the chaise with Adrian’s cum drying on his hand. Adrian and Francis were staring at him. From the stage came the steady wet slap of the satyr’s balls against the nymph’s thighs.

“I need a drink,” Robert said.

Suddenly, the stage lights dimmed. The satyr, affecting surprise, pulled away from the nymph and stood. A light appeared from above, like the ascension of the Holy Maiden in a temple panto. The nymph scrambled back into his niche and the satyr dodged behind a potted tree.

Robert had seen the entrance of Ganymene played a thousand different ways in a thousand different satyr plays. Never before had he seen the eromenes descend from the wings in a cage of gold. The boy crouched, figure shrouded in a cape of feathers from some fantastic bird with plumage in colors of flame.

The cage landed with a muted clang and the door sprang open. Slowly Ganymene stood. The feathered cape fell away to reveal his body, nymph-naked and painted gold. He wore only a belt of delicate bells and a mask carved to feign a bird. Fair curls tumbled over his shoulders, braided with feathers and silk ribbons.

“Behold the Golden Bird,” said Francis with mocking ceremony.

“Beautiful,” murmured Adrian.

Robert couldn’t answer. He seemed to have utterly lost the power to speak.

Ganymene shifted his hips. The bells rang in harmony. He began to dance, chiming the bells with a rippling of his stomach muscles that left Robert gasping. Ganymene wove his body like a serpent, each flick of the fingers and turn of his heel a sinuous, stylized movement that flowed effortlessly into the next. His feet seemed to hardly touch the ground. His hands traced patterns in the air as the bells made new melody with every twisting, teasing flex of his hips. He stole Robert’s breath and stirred his cock, that long-denied heat between his legs flaring once more. Adrian reached for it but Robert pushed his hand away. He still had not forgotten the phantom, no matter how exquisitely this Ganymene might dance.

The satyr had been watching the boy from behind the tree and stroking his still-hard cock. Now he threw the audience a broad, knowing grin and stepped out onto the stage. At first Ganymene didn’t notice him too absorbed in the dance. The satyr leered, erection bobbing merrily—almost, Robert thought, in time to the bells.

The boy startled suddenly, as though hearing a noise. He turned to see the satyr.

Robert could hardly follow the chase that ensued. It was meant to be erotic, this scene, the monster bearing down on the fleeing prince—an allegory for the pursuit of a lover, the satyr representing the manly erastes and Ganymene the beautiful, effete eromenes. Robert had only ever found it disturbing. With the light flashing on his grease-painted horns, his bared teeth and oiled muscles, the satyr looked like a demon from the seventh hell. There was desperation in Ganymene’s flight, as though he truly wished to escape, which made Robert distinctly uncomfortable. The boy’s fair curls, his slender body—the ghost of Luca danced before Robert’s eyes, sweet dark eyes bright with love.

Robert shook his head abruptly, trying to dislodge the memory. It didn’t work. It never did.

The satyr seized Ganymene by the hair, causing his head to snap back alarmingly, and tossed the struggling boy over his shoulder as though he were a rag doll. The satyr carried him to the stone altar in the center of the stage and threw him down on it. Ganymene kicked out. The laughing satyr caught his ankle and dragged him closer. He pushed the boy’s legs up to his chest with one hand, exposing his anus to the audience. There were murmurs of appreciation; Robert heard the gasp of at least one man moved to orgasm.

Without preamble, the satyr shoved a thick finger into Ganymene. He twisted his finger savagely, then added another. Ganymene gasped and arched his back, fair hair spilling over the altar. Had the satyr found that place inside of him? Robert saw the satyr’s mouth move—and the boy struck out, his long painted nails scratching the satyr’s cheek.

From the satyr’s roar of fury, Robert guessed that this little mutiny had not been choreographed. The satyr slammed Ganymene’s head into the altar. Robert winced at the impact. It was playacting, surely, but the blow sounded real enough, as did Ganymene’s muffled  _unh_  of pain. In one motion, the satyr flipped Ganymene onto his stomach and spread his ass wide. He threw the audience a lewd grin before shoving his cock inside.

Nothing in the satyr’s manner had given Robert cause to suppose him gentle, but he had not expected the sheer brutality with which the beast ravaged Ganymene’s body. He used his cock like a battering ram, opening the boy up with long rough strokes before beginning to pummel him in earnest. Ganymene shuddered under the assault, scrabbling at the altar for purchase and finding none. The satyr’s fingers dug into his hips; Robert could see crescent-shaped marks from where his fingernails had pierced the boy’s skin. The satyr thrust himself in to the hilt, then leaned down and bit the back of Ganymene’s neck hard enough to draw blood. He fucked him gnawing at his painted flesh, hand between his legs mauling painted cock and balls.

To his disgust Robert felt a thrill of arousal. He fumbled in his jacket for a cigarette and lit it with shaking hands.

“I really must book the man,” said Francis conversationally. “Perhaps the Bird as well. I don’t think anyone’s ever had a private satyr show. What a novel pleasure it would be.”

The satyr came with a howl like an animal in heat. He yanked his cock out of Ganymene’s limp body. It was still erect and glistening with fluids. In the harsh glow of the stage lights it looked grotesque, inhuman. The satyr swaggered to stand in front of Ganymene. He grabbed the boy’s curls and yanked his head up; with the other hand he guided his soiled cock to the boy’s lips. Obedient, Ganymene opened his mouth. The satyr shoved in.

Robert felt sick. His cock throbbed. He lit another cigarette from the dog-end of the last and took a deep burning draught. Beside him Adrian fidgeted, no doubt wondering why his once-again lover had suddenly gone frigid. Let him wonder. Robert hadn’t forgotten the rash, or the baronet.

Onstage, Ganymene’s golden head was bobbing over the satyr’s crotch. The satyr had planted his fists on his hips and was leering triumphantly at the audience, clearly inviting the men to join his delight at the boy’s taming. Though it was all acting Robert couldn’t help feel a twinge of unease. His mother had played the rape of Melia in the underworld once, a tupenny part for a fading dancehall girl, and she’d come back black and blue and swearing she’d never do another brothel panto as long as she lived.

He wondered how long Ganymene’s body would carry the mark of the satyr’s hands.

“M’lord?”

Robert snapped out of his reverie. One of the nymph-boys was at his elbow, shifting nervously from foot to foot. He was the one that had cried out—surely not yet thirteen, dark-skinned and far too thin.

“M’lord is to play Melchior,” said the child-whore sullenly.

Robert immediately looked over at Francis, who was trying to hide his smirk and failing.

“You utter bastard,” Robert said.

“Consider it a Bacchanal gift,” Francis said sweetly. “A token of affection from your dear cousin.”

“You can take your gift and shove it up your—” Robert began.

“Robert.” Adrian stayed him with a hand on his arm and wet lips brushed against his ear. Whispered, “I want to watch you fuck him.”

Robert’s mouth went dry. He managed, “Is that so?”

“Mmm.” Adrian’s fingers slid between his legs, light and deft. “I want to see  _this_ —“ he squeezed, just hard enough to make Robert’s eyes roll back in his skull— “moving in and out of that pretty whore. I want you to look at me while you fuck him and imagine my ass around your cock.”

Robert was having trouble remembering to breathe. “I – ah – I think that can be arranged.”

“Good.” The hand withdrew, to Robert’s dismay. Adrian laid a chaste kiss on his cheek. “Now go pleasure the little slut senseless.”

 

Robert’s mother tread the boards of the finest dancehalls in Paradiso before the opium had ruined her looks, and Robert once known the theater as well as he now knew the marble halls of Court. It came rushing back to him now with the smell of sawdust and greasepaint in the air and the boards beneath his feet. Mounting the stairs to the wings was a homecoming he’d never wanted, and he found himself reeling with the strangeness of it. He could almost hear the crisp rustle of Maman’s petticoats sweeping across the stage, her voice singing the latest bawdyhouse tune, the rich, brittle laugh that she used when flirting with admirers or customers.

The child-whore guided Robert into a dressing room where a eunuch waited with Melchior’s silver mask. Robert obediently sipped the wine that the whore pressed into his hand. The metallic taste, now familiar, scoured his tongue. Another one of Francis’s gifts, no doubt. He drained the goblet as the eunuch draped him in iron-colored silk. When the eunuch’s hand strayed to Robert’s quiescent cock he flinched—but the drugged wine was stronger than his inhibitions, and he allowed the slave to work him back to hardness.

“Truly, my lord has been blessed by the god Bacchus,” the eunuch murmured, weighing Robert’s length in his palm.

“My lord is going to need another drink before he allows that kind of talk,” slurred Robert.

The eunuch made a motion to the whore, who brought another goblet. And after that—light on silk, the eunuch’s clever fingers on his balls, cold mask settling over his face—and brief, blissful freedom from unwelcome memories.

Robert came back to himself behind the curtain, holding onto the eunuch’s shoulder for support. He hadn’t come, and his body throbbed with need as his head throbbed with wine. Onstage the satyr was raping Ganymene again, thrusting in and out of him with gusto. Up close the man looked even more monstrous—his muscles gleaming with sweat and paint, horsehair tangled around the greased horns, teeth bared and the whites of his eyes almost glowing in the harsh stage-light. Ganymene’s limbs trembled under the assault but he rode the satyr’s brutal pace, pushing back as the satyr rammed in and grinding his ass on the overlarge cock inside of him. His eyes were closed in concentration, mouth compressed into a thin line. Robert could see an ugly smear of blood on his thigh.

Robert felt the sudden urgent need to tear the satyr off of Ganymene. He wanted to kiss the whore’s lips, his fluttering throat – lick the satyr’s leavings from his hole – lay him down and take him slowly, gently, stroking that sweet spot inside of him until he spilled his pleasure into Robert’s hand.

The fantasy was almost enough to make him come untouched.  _Ater’s balls, this stuff is strong_ , Robert thought with the part of his brain not currently imagining how Ganymene’s ass would taste.

“Your cue, my lord,” said the eunuch.

Robert took a deep breath and stepped onto the stage.

For a moment he was blinded by the stage lights. There was a wooden sword in his hand, and he waved it to distract from his confusion. The audience’s laughter was a distant thing. His eyes adjusted; he saw the thrawn figure of the satyr coming towards him, swinging his massive cock in a parody of swordplay.

Well, at least Robert was on familiar ground here. He flourished the sword and feigned an advance-lunge. The satyr followed the distraction, and Robert caught him in the side with the flat of the wooden blade. He expected this to end it, but apparently the satyr was in a gamesome mood. He staggered forward and swung at Robert with an open hand. Either the satyr intended to miss or Robert’s reflexes were very good; in any case, he managed to dodge. He turned the clumsy evasion into a feint, dealing the satyr another blow on the hip. The satyr roared in frustration, real or feigned Robert didn’t know. He swung again, this time with a closed fist. Robert parried it easily and hit the satyr for the last time, an ungentle strike to the head that knocked him to the ground. As he crawled away, Robert gave him a swift kick in the rear. The audience roared.

Robert turned to the altar where Ganymene knelt, waiting. Everything about him shone, from his gilt mask to his gold-painted skin to his golden hair. Only his eyes were dark, shadowed by the mask and his thick eyelashes. The god-slave waited silent, still, to be raped again.

He was beautiful. It was shocking, his beauty, like a sudden chill. Robert found himself shivering for it, and with the idea that he could mar it with his hands and teeth and other unworthy parts of himself. Almost he wanted to back away, reverently, as though the whore were a true god. All thoughts of Adrian had fled. There was only Ganymene left in the world.

Ganymene moved then. He held out his hand, beckoning. Robert could smell the sex on him, the sweat. His full painted lips parted, as though to speak—as though, Robert thought dizzily, to suck. Arousal overwhelmed him. He dropped his sword and stumbled towards the beckoning hand. He held out his own and Ganymene entwined their fingers, as Luca had done once upon a time, and pulled Robert closer.

All Robert’s strength left him. He fell forward, bearing Ganymene down upon the altar. He caught himself gracelessly on his elbows, the ends of his long red hair brushing Ganymene’s shoulders and his lips a breath away from the boy’s throat. Gently, gently, Robert kissed the hollow of that throat, lips against the fluttering pulse. He could have sworn he heard Ganymene sigh.

Robert pushed himself up onto his hands. Ganymene lay beneath him, a breathing golden idol. In that moment Robert would have been content to worship him to damnation and back.

“You’re beautiful,” Robert whispered.

Ganymene’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth, then silenced himself with a minute shake of his curls. He bit his lip, and slowly, almost nervously, raised his hand to Robert’s cheek.

Robert turned his head to kiss the soft palm. It was unpainted and seemed somehow vulnerable for it, naked. He kissed Ganymene’s wrist and the crook of his elbow. He kissed his trembling shoulder, his winglike collarbone. He traced the line of Ganymene’s jaw with his mouth, so, so close to those gasping lips, then drew back. Ganymene’s eyes were bright and unfocused, his lips and pretty chest stained with flush. He looked at Robert with an expression Robert could not name. Their hands met again.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” said Robert. And he did.

Oh.

_Oh._

The cold shock of knowledge cut through Robert like a knife and he jerked back, lips burning with the kiss. Ganymene looked up at him with dazed eyes. Violet eyes.

_No. No._  It couldn’t be.

Unthinking, Robert reached out and pulled away Ganymene’s mask.

A ghost looked up at him.

The silver-laced wine roared in Robert’s head. Past and present and Luca and Ganymene became a delirious one. Robert might have screamed, he didn’t know. His ears were roaring. He staggered back from the ghost on the altar whose too-familiar face was furrowed in bemusement. The ghost reached out a hand, a dead golden hand, and said something, lips forming vowels and consonants that Robert had utterly lost the meaning of somewhere between confusion and sheer bloody-minded terror.

_Remember me, Robbie_.

Oh, Robert remembered. He remembered the Baron’s pleasure-slave, a slip of a boy not yet twelve. The boy had been beautiful and Robbie had loved him, not for his beauty but for his serious eyes and whisper-voice and the way he bit his nails. But Luca was dead, and Robbie had killed him, and so it was completely impossible that he was here, looking at Robert in wide-eyed confusion as though it had simply slipped his mind that he wasn’t alive anymore.

Robert fled. He wasn’t proud of it, cringing at his cowardice even as he stumbled through the brothel doors, tearing off the mask and silver drapery. Outside, Bacchanal was a reeling, nightmarish headache of noise and color. Robert caught sight of the youth in the gilded cat mask, dancing alongside a papier-mâché throne being carried through the crowd, in which sat a fat, naked, masturbating dwarf. The absurdity of it tore a shriek of hysterical laughter from Robert. Passing revelers looked at him nervously.

_I have gone completely mad_ , Robert told himself calmly. With this thought in mind, he tottered over to the nearest gutter, sank to his knees, and vomited until he passed out.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Every boy-brothel in Paradiso had an altar for the whore god. It would’ve been bad luck not to. At the Laughing Rooster the altar had been a crudely carved statue propped up on a crate, stinking of half-rotted offerings and greasy with melted penny candle’s wax. The Harlequin was no dockside whorehouse, thank you  _very_  much, and its altar was as tasteless as the rest of the décor. A scalloped niche was set into the wall near the dormitories, rich with gold leaf and the warm smell of incense; the statue of Ganymene was carved from white marble, posed mid-dance, foot raised, arms outstretched, smile welcoming. Luca always thought that he looked kind. Almost like a friend.

Luca liked to visit the altar before he played the god. He’d been raised to the Lady, who was all gods in one, and worried that the satyr plays were a sort of sacrilege. The Lady wouldn’t be swayed by lit candles and petty sacrifices, but Ganymene was the whore god. Like Luca, he’d probably been bought for less.

Today Luca brought Ganymene a vial of lavender scent that a patron had given him. There’d been a necklace as well, a string of pearls clasped with a diamond. Master Boq had taken that, of course, but the scent was cheap and he had let Luca keep it. “An indulgence,” he’d said, guiding Luca’s mouth down to his crotch. “A pretty treat for my pretty Bird.”

Luca had been careful not to spill too much scent on the altar each sacrifice, trying to make it last. Now he shook the last few drops of sweet water from the bottle. A paltry offering. Hopefully Ganymene would understand. Looking at his beatific marble expression, Luca thought that he would.

“Hey! Luca!”

Luca looked up to see Asher skidding to a halt in front of the altar. “Better light an extra candle,” he panted. “Master wants you. Now.”

Luca’s brain froze. “But it isn’t Wednesday,” he said idiotically.

Asher shook his head. “It's not for that,” he said. “He looked pissed.”

It was a good question. If Master Boq didn’t want Luca for sex that meant he was being summoned for punishment. Luca racked his brains frantically, trying to think of what the fault could have been, but drew a blank. Had he angered a patron perhaps? He’d cried after what the Pig had done to him last time, but surely the Pig enjoyed it when he cried? He always had in the past anyway. Oh, and Lord Avarill had been less than pleased with Luca’s service yesterday, when not even all the skill ten years as a whore had taught him could rouse the man’s ancient prick, but his lordship had seemed content enough to cuff Luca soundly and spend the rest of his appointment complaining about his financial manager. Still, that could be it. Nobles always took it as a personal insult when they were too old or drunk to get hard with him. Well, Lord Avarill wasn’t terribly important. Master Boq would probably have Sark give Luca a taste of the belt and cut his rations for the week, but it most likely wouldn’t be a whipping offense.

“What d’you think he wants?” The question was asked nonchalantly, but Asher’s long honey-colored eyes were wide with worry.

“Service, most likely,” said Luca with a lightness that belied the knot in his stomach. “He’ll have been at the Games all day. The blood gets him riled.”

“But it isn't Wednesday,” Asher pointed out.

“Maybe he’s drawn up a new schedule and forgot to tell us.”

“Or he’s so drunk he’s forgotten what day it is.”

Luca gave him a warning look. “Asher, don’t.”

“It's  _true_ ,” Asher retorted. “Besides, why would he fuck you before a show? He  _never_ does that, even on Wednesdays.”

Luca shrugged and tried to smile. “Masters have these crazy whims sometimes.”

“Yeah, well,” Asher muttered, scuffing his toe against the floor. “I don’t like it. You haven't done anything.”

“Don’t worry,” Luca said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “Everything will be fine. I’ll make it fine.”

 

It was evident when Luca arrived in Master Boq’s office, however, that everything was far from fine. Master Boq was leaning back in his chair, eyes closed, fingers steepled over his mound of gut. The phonograph in the corner warbled opera, one of the popular new tragedies. There was a bottle of sherry on the desk, half-drunk.

When Luca entered Master Boq looked up. Luca saw that his eyes were red-rimmed, his complexion sallow. His gout must be bothering his liver as well as his temper. Lady preserve, this wasn’t good.

Luca folded his hands behind his back and sank to his knees, trying to ignore the strain in his thighs from the night before. The Frankish diplomat had apparently thought him nothing more than a triple-jointed marionette and had bent him into one impossibly acrobatic position after another. His entire body felt as though it had been stretched on the rack.

“I sent that boy for you five minutes ago,” said Master Boq, voice only slightly slurred. “Should I blame his lassitude or yours?”

“Mine,” Luca said immediately. “I was praying, Master.”

“And the god is more important than your master’s orders?”

“My master is my god in this world,” said Luca, choosing his words carefully. “I didn’t want to offend to Ganymene in case he cursed the House with ill luck.”

“Hm.” Master Boq narrowed his eyes, shrewd even drunk. “I hope your piety hasn’t made you late for your appointments with patrons.”

“Never, master!”

“Only appointments with me?”

Luca bit his lip. Master Boq had him cornered. Time to grovel.

“Forgive me, master,” Luca murmured. He kissed the floor before his master’s velvet dressing-slippers. “Please. I’m lazy and ungrateful and deserve to be punished.”

“Hmph.” Master Boq kicked him away, but without any particular malice. “Change the record.  _Í Fior,_ I think. And pour me another glass of sherry.”

While Master Boq was distracted by the opening notes of the aria, Luca took the opportunity to water down his sherry. Not enough for him to notice, just enough to prevent him from getting falling-down drunk. When Luca handed the glass to Master Boq the drink gleamed no less red for the dilution.

“Rub my feet,” Master Boq ordered, kicking off his slippers.

Luca knelt before him again and took up one horny, stale-smelling yellow foot. Gout had swollen the master’s joints, and his toes were puffy and hot beneath Luca’s fingers. Luca massaged the arch of Master Boq’s foot until the man groaned and relaxed back into his chair.

“That’s my good boy,” sighed Master Boq. “My little bird. No, you stupid slut, I’ve tendonitis in my heel, don’t you know anything? Ah, yes, that’s better, just there. Dear child.”

Luca worked silently, loosening his master’s feet as he knew the booze would loosen his tongue. After a while, Master Boq asked, voice drowsy with sherry and satiety, “How long have I owned you, Luca?”

“Three years, master.”

“You’ve come far in the world, little bird.” Master Boq’s hand was heavy on his hair. “From half-dead in a dockside tavern to starring in the satyr play of the finest House in Paradiso.”

“Yes, master.” Perfunctorily, Luca kissed his master’s gnarled foot. “Thank you, master.”

Master Boq smiled languidly. “Come here, little bird,” he said, stroking Luca’s cheek. “Show me your gratitude.”

Perhaps Asher was partially right and Master Boq was too drunk to remember his own fuck-schedule. Not that it was Luca’s concern: his only job was to please his master, as often and enthusiastically as possible. And so to that end he prepared his smile and rose, letting his robe fall open.

Luca hadn’t had time to apply perfume or drape himself with jewelry the way Master Boq liked him, but he thought from the man’s contented sigh that perhaps he was pleased with the way Luca looked regardless. Luca worried sometimes, examining his body in the mirror after a patron, that he was getting old, that his skin wasn’t as smooth as it had been when he was sixteen, or his ass as tight, and it was always a relief to find that his master still desired him. Even at almost nineteen. Practically twenty, which was practically thirty, at which point he might as well be dead.

Luca dismissed this chain of thought as unproductive.  _Focus_. Master Boq’s hands slid over his chest, plucking at his nipples. Luca arched and moaned, grinding his ass into Master Boq’s lap.

“Kiss me,” the master ordered.

Luca obeyed. Master Boq’s hand strayed between Luca’s legs, fondling his limp prick, as the other ranged over his body. Tonight he seemed content only to kiss, to touch, and Luca was grateful for it. He really didn’t want to have a sore asshole before the satyr play even began. And he’d certainly have one after.

 _Don’t think of the Beast_ , Luca told himself.  _Don’t think of his hands, or his teeth, or his_ cock—

“You love me, don’t you, Luca?”

Luca blinked at the interruption of his morbid train of thought. “Yes, master,” he replied, trying to sound as though he meant it.

“And you want to please me?”

“I live to please my master,” he replied, the words as worn with repetition as worry beads.

There was a pause as Luca nibbled his master’s earlobe. Then, “There will be a special visitor in the audience tonight.”

Luca drew back. “A patron?”

“Not yet, little bird, but if you do your job well…” Master Boq trailed off meaningfully.

“I’ll try, master,” Luca promised.

Master Boq ran his fingers slowly down Luca’s spine. “Do you remember where I found you, little bird?” he asked softly.

Luca swallowed. “Y-yes, master,” he said, hating the way his voice broke.

Master Boq smiled, eyes bright and cold. “And you don’t want to be sent back there, do you?”

Luca closed his eyes. He remembered too little food and too many men, the stink of sweat and cum and blood, the drugged exhaustion that made his head go so foggy he sometimes thought he could hear Robbie’s voice in his ear, kind and laughing, even though he knew it wasn’t Robbie, that it was always just another putrid dockworker come to make him hurt in the place that was never given enough time to heal, but he still  _hoped_ , every time, and it made it so, so much worse when the pain started.

“Please,” Luca whispered. “ _Please_  don't.”

“Then you won’t merely try,” said Master Boq sweetly. “You’ll do your job very well indeed. Won’t you?”

“Yes, master,” said Luca fervently.

 

After he’d brought Master Boq off with his hand and licked him clean, Luca was dismissed with a cheerful smack on the bottom. Once the door had closed behind him he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“What’d the big man want with you, then?”

Luca turned to see Sark, leaning insouciantly against a fresco of fat dancing angels. He was smoking a cigarette, and his blunt, handsome features were wreathed in sweet-smelling smoke.

“’Sides your mouth, I mean,” Sark added with a knowing grin.

Luca caught his lip between his teeth. Master Boq wouldn’t want one of his slaves gossiping about his business, but Luca couldn’t ignore a direct question from the overseer. And chances were Sark already knew about the prospective patron and wanted to test Luca, so if Luca lied he’d catch it for sure. He scrambled desperately for an answer that wouldn’t get him beaten. There didn’t seem to be one. He gnawed his lip and remained silent.

Sark grabbed Luca’s wrist. “Now, now,” he said, pulling him close, “where are all your pretty manners? When a free man asks you a question you answer it, love.”

The smell of tobacco was overwhelming. Luca turned his face away.

“Sir, I need to get ready,” he said, hating the whine that crept into his voice. “The show—”

“—Can wait.” Sark reached into his jerkin and pulled out a book. “You’ve a debt to pay first, don’t you?”

The book was bound in cranberry leather, still dusty from the shelf and carrying that particular clean, old odor that Luca imagined bookshops smelled like. Inside there would be rows of black type, equally neat, full of letters waiting to become words waiting to become worlds. Luca’s fingers twitched with longing.

“And not cheap, either,” Sark went on. “I’d guess the price at a nice long blowjob followed by a ride in that tight little asshole of yours.”

“Tomorrow,” Luca promised, eyes not leaving the book.

“Tonight,” said Sark. “You’ve time before the show.”

“I’m probably missed already! Please, sir.” Luca allowed the whine to blossom into a full-blown wheedle. “Tomorrow, I swear, I’ll be so good for you—I’ll let you do whatever you want to me, by the Lady, I’ll suck you better than I would the king, but not tonight,  _please_  not tonight—”

“Haggle with me would you? Uppity slut.” Sark’s grip on Luca’s arm became bruising tight. Luca closed his eyes and waited for the blow.

It didn’t come. Instead Sark dropped Luca’s arm and shoved him away. Luca stumbled back, catching himself against the wall.

“Go on then,” said Sark roughly. “Away with you.”

Luca dropped a hasty bow and backed away, hardly daring to believe his luck.

“But I’ll take my trade tonight,” Sark called after him. “You’re to expect me after the show, love. And I’d better find you spread and grateful that I’m going to fuck your ass instead of flog it.”

Luca groaned inwardly. Not so lucky after all, then.

 

The dressing room was, as usual, in chaos. Naked boys jostled each other for space in front of the mirrors, cursing when their careful application of maquillage was ruined by a stray elbow or trodden foot. They talked loudly, trading dirty jokes and blowjob tips. The younger boys flitted amongst the performers carrying clay jugs of wine laced with bliss.

Luca caught the concentrated stench of perfume and coughed. He concluded from the fact that Tris was leaning over his page and bawling abuse into his face that he had something to do with the scent-bottle that lay in pieces on the floor. The boy looked like he was trying desperately not to cry. Luca winced in sympathy. He looked around for his own page, but Asher was nowhere to be seen.

“So the Golden Bird has finally deigned to grace us with his presence.”

Luca turned to see Bagoas striding towards him, kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed in impatience. He folded his hands into the broad sleeves of his robe and arched a penciled eyebrow. “Well?”

“The master wanted me.”

“It's not Wednesday,” Bagoas pointed out.

“He wanted me to rub his feet,” Luca elaborated.

“Hm.” Bagoas’s eyes narrowed further. “Well, of course all of our dear master’s extremities must be awarded the very highest priority. You have a little cum on your lip, by the way. Just there.”

Luca went red and scrubbed his hand across his mouth.

“Much better.” The barest hint of a smile played over Bagoas’s face. “Now come, we need you painted gold before the curtain rises.”

 

By the time the curtain rose Luca had indeed been painted gold by a team of efficient pages—including, much to Tris’s annoyance, his own beleaguered wait-boy. Luca tried to smile at him encouragingly, but the boy refused to look at him.

After the painting Luca had to stand, arms extended, waiting for the stuff to dry long enough to develop a seriously annoying cramp in his calf. Asher had been found hiding behind a chest of little-used props and, after clouting his about the ear, Bagoas set him to weaving ribbons into Luca’s hair. It was a task which Asher went about with supreme reluctance. His clumsy fingers snarled Luca’s long curls into knots while he kept up a constant mutter of complaints about the stupidity of the world in general and satyr plays in specific.

“Not even like I make a very  _good_ nymph,” he muttered, trying to untangle his fingers from a ribbon. “Old Bag-of-wind says I fidget. Of course I do! Standing up there like an idiot—all those eyes looking at you—and hungry on top of it! And then there’s – you know –  _Him…_ ” Asher gave an expressive shudder. “At least he doesn’t have the go-ahead to  _fuck_ me with that thing, not yet—just sticks it between my thighs, looks real enough.”

He paused, tugging back a wayward curl, then said in a small voice, “But the things he  _says_ …” Another shudder, this one not exaggerated. “And I know you say to go somewhere else in your head, but I don’t read all them books like you do, I don’t have all them other places in my brain.”

“Just imagine him in bloomers,” Luca advised. “Really lacy ones. With ruffles.”

Asher laughed so hard at the image that he was obliged to double over wheezing. “If I do that I’ll piss myself laughing, and then he’d kill me. Are your hands dry? These ribbons look like shit.”

Luca’s hands were dry, so he shuffled carefully over to where Melchior’s mask hung from the wall, its polished surface reflective as a mirror. The ribbons did, indeed, look like shit. Luca sighed and set about untangling Asher’s handiwork. Asher watched, fidgeting.

“Problem?” Luca asked, disentangling a particularly knotty clump of ribbon above his left ear.

“Left your mask in the room,” Asher confessed. “Can I—”

“Yes, go.”

Asher darted away as quick as a cutpurse, leaving a trail of elbowed ribs and trodden toes in his wake. Luca suppressed a smile.

Bagoas’s reflection appeared over Luca’s shoulder. “What is this? The third whore of the House doing his own hair? Where’s that lazy page of yours?”

“On an errand,” Luca replied. “I forgot my mask.”

Bagoas raised an eyebrow in polite incredulity. “Did you now? How careless of you. Here, let me.”

Luca dropped his hands. Bagoas loosened the knot he had been working on and deftly twisted it into a neat braid.

“He was fortunate to be assigned to you, you know.” Bagoas twined two braids together with a shot of green silk ribbon. “Any of the other boys would have caned him crippled within the week.”

Luca thought about Asher’s tantrums, his taciturn sulks, the way he scowled and ground his teeth after a patron to keep himself from crying. “He misses his family.”

Bagoas met Luca’s eyes in the mirrored surface of the mask. “He’s been working the floor for five months now,” Bagoas said levelly, “and has not risen in the rankings.”

“He’s just green, is all!”

“He’s a dead weight, Luca.”

Luca shook his head, dislodging Bagoas’s hand. “No! He’s just—it’s  _different_ for him, see, he’s debt-bound, free-born, he’s not – not  _used_ to it like I – like I—” Luca took a deep breath, willing calm into his voice. “He’ll learn. I swear he’ll learn.”

“Come now, we both know that isn’t true.” Bagoas twisted a curl behind Luca’s ear and pinned it in place. “My advice? Don’t get too attached to the boy. It will only make it more difficult for you when the master sells him.”

Luca felt the breath clog in his throat. He opened his mouth, trying to form a rejoinder, but Asher clattered over, dragging the mask and chattering away.

“—was under your pallet, dunno how it got there, bit squashed but it looks fine.” Asher pressed the feathered mask to his face. “See?”

“The costumes are not supposed to leave the dressing room,” Bagoas said without looking up. “If you want to make yourself useful, fetch your pedant’s bells and oil.”

“Yes, Bagoas,” Asher muttered, dropping the mask ungently on a dressing table. He clattered off, reluctant but obedient, thank Goddess.

“He’ll learn,” Luca repeated, whether to assure Bagoas or himself he didn’t know.

Bagoas arched an eyebrow and said nothing.

Asher returned with the materials. Bagoas helped Luca strap the belled bracelets to his wrists and ankles, then bent him over to oil and stretch his entrance.

“You’re still tight,” Bagoas noted, pushing in two fingers. “Too tight. We don’t want the satyr to tear you. Boy, fetch a consolateur. Eight inches, I think.”

Asher furrowed his brow. “Conso – con –  _what?_ ”

“A dildo, Asher,” Luca said, looking back over his shoulder. “On the shelf near the oils.”

“A cock-sham, you mean?” Asher said, brow smoothing. “Well, why didn’t you just  _say_?”

Bagoas rolled his eyes expressively, but said nothing. When Asher was out of earshot, the eunuch said casually, “The master has received an offer for Bridda. Had you heard?"

Luca jerked his head up. “For  _Bridda_? But Bridda’s first whore—he’s the top earner in the House! Why would the master sell him?”

Bagoas added another finger, pushing in to the knuckle. “Bridda’s been weakening. He tires after three patrons and his performance has suffered. Not a few of his regulars have dropped him.”

“Is he ill?”

Bagoas shrugged. “He coughs blood. Yesterday he fainted during an appointment.”

Luca exhaled. “Consumption.”

“The master thinks so, yes.” Bagoas worked a fourth finger inside of Luca. “He let it become known that he would be entertaining offers for Bridda and a second-tier brothel put in a bid.”

“They don’t know he’s dying?”

“The master did not see fit to inform them, no.”

Luca bit his lip. “Poor Bridda,” he murmured. With his dark hair swept back with ivory combs and the blue tattoos scrolling up his spine, Bridda had always seemed so elegant, so unassailably glamorous. Luca couldn’t imagine him wasting away in some shabby brothel off the Arcade.

An unpleasant thought occurred. “I suppose this means that Tris will become first whore.”

Bagoas drizzled more oil around Luca’s stretched asshole. Steepling his fingers, he pushed deeper, thumb entering Luca to the first joint. “Not necessarily,” Bagoas said over Luca’s muffled  _uhn_ of discomfort. “He’s nearing twoscore and two.”

“That old?” Luca said, surprised. “He doesn’t look more than twenty.”

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

Bagoas’s whole hand slid into Luca’s rectum to the wrist. Luca dropped his head, breath coming labored, and tried to relax, to adjust to the intrusion. The Beast’s cock was far longer than Bagoas’s hand and thicker around. If Luca couldn’t take a simple fisting, the Beast would shred him to ribbons.

“You’re having trouble tonight,” Bagoas noted, flexing his fingers. “I hope it doesn’t affect your performance.”

Luca shook his head, ribbons tickling his shoulders. “It won’t.”

“Good.”

Bagoas thrust his hand shallowly, letting Luca get used to the feel of it, opening him slowly, gently. Luca was grateful for the man’s patience. Sark would have rammed inside roughly and told him to stop being such a winging girl about it, and the Beast—No. Better not to think about the Beast.

“So if Tris is twenty-six, that means he’s only a year away from being sold,” Luca said, forcing his attention back to the matter at hand. “Less, probably."

Bagoas nodded. “As you know, the master never keeps a boy past the age of twenty-seven. Even a favorite. Tris’s days are numbered.” Bagoas lowered his voice and went on, almost urgently, “But you, Luca—your career is just beginning. Already you equal Tris and even Bridda in prestige. You are the best dancer on our books, and your client list is impressive. I would not be surprised if the master passes over Tris and makes you first whore once Bridda is gone.”

Before Luca could catch his breath Asher was back, flourishing a wooden phallus triumphantly.

“All the cock-shams were taken, I had to wait for Crilly to finish using his,” he said. “Don’t worry, I washed it.” He looked down at the juncture of Bagoas’s wrist and Luca’s asshole. His eyes widened. “Bloody hell. How’d you fit that  _up_ him?”

“Carefully,” Bagoas snapped. He eased his hand out just as carefully. Luca tried not to shudder as the ridge of knuckle caught his rim before popping free.

Bagoas had done an expert job of opening him. When he pushed in the phallus Luca accommodated it easily. After Bagoas had satisfied himself that Luca would be able to take the Beast without tearing, he lined Luca’s eyes with kohl, slicked his lips red, and smudged his lids with shadow. Asher fidgeted, chain-smoking cigarillos. The smoke clouded the surface of Melchior’s mask, making it look as though Luca’s face was emerging through fog.

“There,” Bagoas murmured, blotting a stray smear of paint from Luca’s chin. “Now to dress you. Page?”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Asher muttered, stubbing his dog-end out on the wall. “Bloody errand boy, am I?”

“That is exactly what you are,” said Bagoas serenely. “And were you a competent one, you would have had your pedant’s costume and materials laid out for him when he arrived instead of malingering behind a props chest like a lazy dog who’s been too long without feeling the flat of his master’s hand.”

Asher opened his mouth, no doubt formulating a devastatingly rude rejoinder that was sure to get him caned at least.

“ _Manners_ , Asher!” Luca hissed.

Asher rolled his eyes but closed his mouth, quenching the smart reply. Luca breathed a sigh of relief.

“Bring a mirror as well,” Bagoas ordered, as though oblivious to Asher’s mutinous facial contortions. “Full length. Well, what are you still standing there glaring at me for? Away with you.”

Asher struggled for a moment, middle finger attempting to rise from his clenched fist as though of its own accord. Then he turned on his heel and stalked off. Luca watched Asher vanish into the turbulent, caterwauling crowd, then turned to Bagoas.

“The special visitor,” he said. “It’s a test, isn’t it?”

“He’s a prince of the blood,” Bagoas said in undertone. “The only heir to the King’s closest advisor and a breath from the throne.”

Luca closed his eyes. “The master said he was important. I had no idea…”

“If you can secure him as a patron, your promotion is assured.” Bagoas tucked a stray curl behind a crown of braids. “We all want this for you, Luca. Tris does not have your…subtle touch. He could never serve the master’s interests as you can.” Bagoas’s narrowed eyes were like slivers of malachite, cold and gleaming. “Do we understand each other?”

Luca looked down at his hands. Gold paint studded his bitten fingernails. “Yes, Bagoas,” he said.

“Good boy,” said Bagoas. For a moment, he sounded almost like the master.

Asher appeared, feathered cape bundled over one arm and a long mirror clasped beneath the other. He had the red-faced and surly expression of someone who had just had to steal a reflective surface away from a dressing-room of extremely vain whores.

“Finally,” Bagoas sighed, plucking the cape from Asher’s hand. “Go stand against the wall and hold up the mirror.”

Asher obeyed, looking murderous.

With a tailor’s flourish, Bagoas draped the cape over Luca’s shoulders. It settled around him like a down comforter. Bagoas adjusted the drape of it, lips pursed in a critical moue, before stepping back.

“You make a beautiful Ganymene, Luca,” said Bagoas, folding his hands into his sleeves.

It was a rare compliment. Luca ducked his head to hide his blush, pretending to inspect the plumage that billowed around him like feathered fire. “I hope I do the god justice.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in our gods?” said Asher. “You being a barbarian and all.”

“Barbarians believe that all gods are aspects of their goddess,” Bagoas said. “They pay respect to every deity as an incarnation of her. Isn’t that right, Luca?"

Luca nodded, taken aback by the unexpected revelation that Bagoas had a working knowledge of the beliefs of the Chosen. “Besides,” he said, “it’s generally a good idea to show respect for the gods.”

“Especially the gods of your master,” Bagoas added. He gave Asher a pointed look. “You see, boy? Your pedant understands how to be a good slave.”

Asher ducked his head behind the mirror. Luca heard the unmistakable sound of forehead thunking against glass.

“And now for Ganymene’s mask,” Bagoas said, voice inflected with a solemn ceremony Luca wasn’t sure was entirely serious.

The mask was carved of hard wood and painted with thin, nacreous layers of gilt, the entire thing dusted with flecks of gold so that it shimmered in the light. It shaped the top half of a young man’s face, almond-shaped eyes bedroom-heavy and delicate nostrils ever so slightly flared—as though, Luca thought, the god was smelling something unpleasant. This Ganymene looked nothing like the kind, friendly dancer on the dormitory altar. His brows arched ironically above severe cheekbones. It was a beautiful face, more beautiful than the altar statue—whose features, Luca had to admit, were not quite so fine—but he still preferred the smiling Ganymene to this cold, proud one.

The moment the mask settled over his face, Luca felt his lips thin, his own expression grow haughty to match the carved Ganymene’s. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them the world seemed different somehow, colors duller, the edges of things blurred and blunted. When he looked down, his body seemed wreathed in flame.

“Ah,” said Bagoas, voice soft and dark and smudged as charcoal, “I think the god has blessed you with his favor.”

Luca felt hands on his shoulders, gently turning him to face the mirror. “Look at yourself,” Bagoas murmured. “How could the lord resist you?”

The golden boy in the glass gazed at Luca with eyes shadowed by the mask. The eunuch stood behind him draped in violet silk. White teeth gleamed against bronze skin. The boy holding the mirror looked on, face half-obscured by the glass. On the opposite wall Melchior’s mask shone with fractured reflection. It projected an endless mirror in which golden boys watched themselves warily, as though mistrustful of their own likeness.

Bagoas smiled. “Let the show begin.”

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Luca hated the cage. Accessible by a rickety railing that wrapped around the outer wall of the stage, it dangled from a pulley about whose structural stability he had serious doubts. He could see the stage through the bars, light-slick heads bobbing dizzyingly far below him. When he caught sight of the Beast’s greasy horns he scuttled to the far corner of the cage and drew his knees up to his chest. The cage swung lazily. Luca swallowed down nausea.

Instead of watching the Beast tug his massive cock and imagining the inevitable moment when it would enter him, Luca looked down at the audience. He liked to watch the men like this, unseen and untouched. After the initial vertiginous horror had passed, he could pretend he really was a bird, or a god, observing the world from above. The gods must grow bored, Luca supposed, nothing to do but swan around Paradise and rape beautiful mortals. They must look down at their human subjects and wonder, like Luca wondered.

Take the man in the far corner, hair snaking in long coils over his shoulders. He wore a velvet cape that fell about him in plum folds and held a long cigarette between longer fingers. With the other hand he stroked himself idly through his trousers, dark eyes liquid with pleasure. He could be a sorcerer, Luca thought, the sort that knights would battle in the books. No doubt he had a sinister fortress guarded by some kind of evil creature, a gryphon maybe, and fenced with the bodies of defeated enemies impaled on pikes. Luca could easily imagine those long fingers flipping through the pages of arcane magical texts and flickering with spells. He was probably in Paradiso on dark business of his own. The thought gave Luca a pleasant little chill.

Oh, and that man there, the one with the beard of cork-thick curls and the drop of amber hanging from his ear, he was obviously a pirate king. He had a ship called the  _Queen of Mercy_ and a parrot who whistled in the language of the fishes. The parrot, Luca reasoned, had been left at home.

Luca scanned the crowd, locating an explorer, a master swordsman, and a Tyrminian sheik—who, judging by the swarthy bodyguard who hulked behind him badly costumed as a jester, probably was a sheik. That was no fun. Guessing right ruined the game. Luca decided he was a thief instead. He planned to rob the Harlequin tonight, and the swarthy jester was his muscle. Maybe they would carry off one of the whores. Luca hoped it would be Tris.

A flash of red caught Luca’s eye. A man’s hair, russet as autumn and caught at his nape with a black ribbon. The man attached, shockingly, went unmasked. Was he a nobody, then, too obscure to worry about a scandal? Or too powerful to care? He had a patrician’s face, handsome in a hawkish sort of way, with a sharp aquiline nose and clever grey eyes which flickered restlessly about the room, as though searching for someone. His clothes were plain, almost ostentatiously so in a room full of costumes, but the scarlet of his waistcoat and the delicate gold of his watch-chain spoke of money. Still, the coat was ill-fitting and a decade out of fashion, short enough in the arms to allow a bloom of sleeve from each frayed cuff—sleeves, Luca noted with interest, which were flecked with ink. A scholar?

The red-haired man turned to say something to his companion. A patron; Luca recognized him. He liked to rent Luca for parties. The lord was saying something that displeased the red-haired man. The man’s dark brows swooped down in a scowl of irritation and he ran a hand through his hair, forgetting it was tied back. Sweaty strands fell into his face and he pushed them away, looking even more irritated. Luca decided he was a student, poor but brilliant, with friends in high places. He could imagine the red-haired making the same expression over a difficult work of philosophy or a broken pen nib.

To make things more interesting, Luca tried to argue himself into believing that the red-haired man was the special patron. He man didn’t look a prince, to be sure, but he could be slumming. Luca knew a viscount who insisted on sneaking into Paradiso wearing homespuns and ratty wig. Nobles were always doing things that made no rational sense. This one was probably no different.

If he was a courtier, he had to be a reluctant one—look at the way he rolled his eyes at the lord! But the man in the domino mask with his head on the red-haired man’s lap, now, he was obviously money with that fine embroidered jerkin and ruffled collar at his neck. A dandyboy like that wouldn’t cozy up to any fellow ranked lower than a lord. Maybe the red-haired man was one of those odd nobles who attended the university for study rather than just for show. He could have secret equalitarian sympathies, even! He could even—and here Luca had to stifle a giggle—he could even be writer of those broadsheets the Watch was forever confiscating. The Falcon, that was it.

The idea was so ridiculous that Luca had to bite his cheek not to laugh. No, his first theory was far more likely, even if it was rather boring.

Still, he couldn’t help watching the red-haired man right up until the curtain rose. He was handsome (not, Luca told himself sternly, that it mattered to a slave whether or not a free man was handsome), but there was something else about him that held Luca’s attention. The way he held his cigarette like a dart between thumb and forefinger, taking brief hard pulls through pursed lips – something about his eyes, then, the wicked flash of them in the emberlight – and how his lip curled ever so slightly at the corner, as though he were enjoying a private joke – for a moment there he looked – but then it was gone again – and no, it was impossible, it couldn’t be – it must have been a trick of the light – it  _couldn’t_  be—

From below, the sound of a boy crying out.  _Asher_. Luca dug his fingernails into his palms hard enough to leave purpling crescents.

And then the cage was lowered, the door sprang open, and Luca became the god.

 

He’d always danced. Even before he had ever heard music, before he knew how the cant of a hip, the turn of a thigh, could rile a man. It was what caught the commissar’s notice when he was a child, what had saved him when, years later, Master Boq found him near death in the Laughing Rooster. Now the stage-lights blinded him and the air smelled like the Beast’s sweat and heavy sex—and the Beast was there, not far away, never far enough away—but the rhythm of the dance was in his head, and as he began to move it all melted to insignificance. The Goddess had abandoned him after he became a whore, but sometimes, when he danced, Luca thought he could still feel her.

Luca drew the dance out as long as he could, and longer than he should have. If he looked offstage he knew he’d see Bagoas scowling and mouthing at him to get on with it _._  The Beast’s impatience pressed like a hand against his neck. It would go bad for him if he made the man wait any longer. Luca thought of the dormitory Ganymene, held the merry comfort of his marble smile in mind while he offered up his customary prayer:  _Please, please don’t let me die with his cock inside of me._ Then he turned to face the Beast.

Ah, Lady—slick and stinking with sweat and greasepaint, teeth bared like a snarling dog’s, face twisted in a grin that promised nothing but pain—he still made Luca’s breath catch, even after all this time. Luca stumbled back, flush with adrenaline. Laughter rumbled low in the Beast’s throat. He took a step forward, arms spread in cruel mockery of welcome. Luca ran.

The chase was nothing like the dance. Even though he was supposed to be caught, that was the  _point_ , Luca still hoped, stupidly, that maybe this time he’d be fast enough. Maybe this time he’d escape, or hide, or disappear entirely. Maybe this time…

But the Beast’s fingers tangled in his hair, jerking his head back hard enough to wrench a cry, and he was caught again, caged in muscled arms. Too-bright stage lights spun as Luca was slung over the Beast’s shoulder, then thrown down upon the stone altar. The Beast loomed over him, a horned shadow. Luca swallowed a whimper.

“Miss me, bitch?” the Beast whispered.

Luca kicked out, not playacting resistance. Laughing, the Beast caught his ankle and dragged him closer. The rank smell of him made Luca’s eyes burn. His mocking leer pressed down like the stink.

“Going to stuff you so full, sluttikin. Taste it in your mouth when I come in your ass.”

Luca cried out as the Beast wrenched his legs up and apart. He felt the tip of that obscene length brush his skin and cried out again, shamefully, shuddering as the Beast dragged the fat pulpy head up and down his crack.

Then the cockhead was replaced by a blunt finger shoving hard against his hole. Stupidly, uselessly, Luca tried to clench his anus closed, but after the stretching Bagoas had given him the Beast’s finger slipped in easily. Out, and in again – a parody of sex, the Beast grinning lewdly over him – and another, to the knuckle.

And then –  _Lady!_  – brushing that place, that bad place inside. Heat coiled in Luca’s bottom belly and he fell back, sobbing at the ache between his legs, the ache that meant he’d betrayed himself again. Not hard, no, he’d been trained out of that—but he  _felt_ , for that briefest of moments, and the Beast knew. He knew that Luca wanted it.

Like a  _whore_.

The Beast smiled, horribly. “Like that, do you?”

He stroked his fingers against the place until Luca was shuddering around him, biting his lip hard enough to taste blood and silently begging any deity who would listen to make it end before – before that  _thing_ happened—

“Your little friend liked it too. Cried when I put it in, but soon he was fucking himself on my cock like a proper slut.”

Luca’s entire body stiffened. Asher.  _No_. His hand flew up without conscious thought. It struck its aim. A drop of blood spattered his lip. The Beast roared.

Luca had enough time to think  _Oh shit_  before the Beast slammed his head against the altar.

Everything went a bit strange then. There was pain; Luca registered it distantly, with the same detachment he might note the weather. The dull throbbing ache of his head ate up the whole world. The altar against his cheek felt more real than the bluntness of the Beast’s cockhead against his asshole, the burning weight of his shaft as it shoved inside. That pain was too familiar to be interesting.

Luca thought, inexplicably, of the red-haired man. Was he watching? Touching himself, maybe—or the dandyboy in his lap was. Watching the Beast fuck into Luca. Watching Luca take it. The ache in Luca’s head dropped down to his stomach. It made a hollow emptiness that echoed with the words the Beast was snarling into his ear.

Then the Beast’s hand was between his legs, on his  _prick_ , oh sweet  _Lady_ , and that pain was novel enough to keep Luca from wondering why he cared what the red-haired man thought in the first place.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

*

“ _I’m going to tell you about Ganymene and Melchior,” Luca tells Asher._

_Asher rolls his eyes. His voice is hoarse and cracked with pain. “_ Everyone  _knows_ that  _story.”_

_Luca shakes his head. “Whores tell it different.”_

“ _I’m not a whore,” comes the immediate response._

_Luca does him the kindness of not answering. Tight-lipped, he wrings the bloody rag out in the water-basin. Asher’s thighs are laddered with welts, swollen and seeping red. When Luca daubs the welts with cooling salve Asher buries his head in the pallet not to scream._

“ _Shh, shh,” Luca whispers. He strokes Asher’s back until the shudders subside. “Breathe through it.”_

“ _I’m fine,” Asher grinds out. “Just tell the damn story.”_

_Luca begins._

“ _Back in the days when the gods walked with men, there was a prince so beautiful that he cast his father’s kingdom into chaos. All of the lords wanted him in their beds and his father got no peace. Night and day he had lords coming to him, offering anything from land to money to their daughters’ virginity for a night with Ganymene. The king didn’t know what to do. If he gave his son to one lord, all the others would be jealous. If he gave his son to all the lords, he’d be no better than a common whoremaster. The king was so pestered and so distracted that he came to hate his son. So he banished Ganymene from his kingdom forever._

“ _Heartbroken, Ganymene travelled the countryside. But he wasn’t safe there either. Men wouldn’t leave him alone. Sometimes they’d pretend to be kind. Sometimes they’d just hold him down. Either way, they only wanted one thing. Men only ever want one thing._

“ _Ganymene was clever and he always got away, but he came to fear men like a hart fears the hunter. So like the hart he fled deep, deep into the woods, so deep no men could find him. Finally, when he was too exhausted to flee anymore, he collapsed and slept for a long time._

“ _A satyr found him there. They lived in the woods in those days, before all the trees were cut down for the king’s navy. You still have to be careful walking in the woods at night, if you’re a boy, and you’re pretty. The satyr saw Ganymene there on the ground, beautiful as the sun, and his cock stood up hard between his thighs. He reached out a hairy hand for Ganymene, but the the prince stirred, waking. The satyr ran to hide behind a tree._

“ _Ganymene rose from sleep and began to dance. He danced so beautifully that the satyr couldn’t resist him anymore. Ganymene had been warned about satyrs, and what they do to you if you’re a boy, and you’re pretty. He ran from the satyr, but he couldn’t run fast enough. The satyr caught him and held him fast._

“ _It happens that this wood belonged to the god Melchior. It was where he hunted with his three great hounds, the ones who chase the moon across the sky. There was an altar to Melchior in the clearing where the satyr chased the prince. The satyr held Ganymene down upon the altar and raped him there in the clearing of the god.”_

“ _Why’d Ganymene let the satyr do it?” Asher broke in. “Him a prince and everything. Why’d he let himself get fucked?”_

“ _He didn’t have any choice.”_

“ _Did he fight?”_

“ _Yes.”_

“ _Hard?”_

“ _Hard as he could.”_

“ _Did the satyr hurt him?”_

“ _Until he couldn’t fight anymore.”_

“ _Why couldn’t the satyr just leave him alone?” Asher demands, voice shaking. “Why’d he have to do those things? To hurt Ganymene?”_

“ _Because he wanted to,” Luca says. “Because he could.”_

“ _Godsdamn satyrs,” Asher chokes out. “Evil bastards.”_

_Luca smoothes Asher’s hair away from his sweaty temples. “Do you want me to go on?”_

_It takes a moment, but Asher nods._

“ _The gods know everything that happens in the places that are holy to them. Melchior saw what was being done on the altar, his sacred altar in his sacred woods, and he grew very angry. He wanted to strike down the prince and the satyr where they stood. Any other god would have. But Melchior is the god of justice. He rules patiently. So instead of smiting the prince and the satyr, Melchior climbed down from his silver throne and took up his silver sword and came to the sacred clearing where his altar was being defiled. There he saw the satyr, ugly and horrible, rutting on Ganymene, beautiful as the sun. It angered him to see such a low creature taking the prince’s virginity. He waved his silver sword and roared loud enough to shake the heavens. The satyr was a coward, like all satyrs, and seeing the god so furious he ran far, far away and was never seen in those woods again._

“ _Ganymene cowered before the god. He was naked and stank of the satyr’s filth, but Melchior still wanted him. He laid Ganymene down again upon the altar and raped him gently. Once he had finished he wrapped Ganymene in his cloak of night sky and took him back to the realms of the gods. Melchior worked a spell so that Ganymene would never die and never age, but stay young and beautiful forever. And that’s where Ganymene is still. Waiting on the pleasure of the god.”_

*

 

It wasn’t the length of the Beast’s cock, Luca decided mid-fuck, or the girth either, but the way he  _used_ it. Take how he fucked Luca’s mouth. Luca hadn’t had a gag reflex since he was nine. He could have deep-throated even that length without damaging himself. But the Beast hadn’t given him a chance, ramming in and plowing Luca’s gullet until he was swallowing his own blood along with the Beast’s semen. While Luca was still coughing and trying to suck down as much air as he could between coughs, the Beast walked around the altar, stroking his cock back to stiffness, and wrenched Luca’s legs apart. Luca couldn’t bite back the cry that left him as the Beast entered him a second time. When the Beast started to thrust Luca tossed his head and gnawed his lips and tried to think of the Beast in the pair of voluminous underthings he’d seen fluttering from Mrs. Carpenter’s washline. It didn’t help.

Instead Luca thought of the new book. That did help, a little. Lately Sark had been bringing him histories. Mostly they were dreadfully dull, long droning recitations of battles won and lost, fortresses sieged, treaties signed. The best parts were when the writers talked about the lives of the kings. The writers were always very careful only to say good things about the kings, so Luca had to fill in the details in his head. It was all there between the lines if you looked for it. The wife of King Averus the Peacemaker, childless for twenty years until the handsome Saxam ambassador came to court? Luca knew that he was stupid, but even  _he_ could see that the queen and the ambassador were fucking behind the king’s back. Secret meetings in shadowy chambers, trysts in the king’s own bed….The ambassador had probably given the queen some token of his to wear, a garter still warm from his thigh perhaps, and after the ambassador returned to Saxamy she’d kissed and cried over it, remembering how she’d slipped it from his leg herself and worn it round her wrist, quick to her pulse. A son had been born nine months to the day of his departure, with a Northman’s towsy yellow hair. Had the king been angry? Luca imagined him towering in a rage. But what was he to do? Have the boy thrown over the castle turret? The king needed an heir, after all, and even his wife’s bastard would have to do. A sorry situation indeed. Luca imagined the king a host of pretty mistresses to make up for it.

Luca was yanked back to the present by the Beast’s teeth tearing at his earlobe.

“Where’s your head at, bitch?” the Beast hissed through a mouthful of flesh. His fingers found Luca’s nipple, twisted hard enough to leave him breathless. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say you were thinking of something other than my cock in your worthless cunt.”

“No,” Luca gasped, grinding frantically back on the man’s cock. “No, swear, only, only thinking of you, sir. You fucking my worthless cunt.”

The Beast dug a fingernail into the bruised circle of Luca’s tit. His head came up, mouth opening in a swallowed scream.

“Don’t know if I believe that,” the Beast said conversationally. He slowed his strokes, thrusting unhurried and deliberate as he pulped Luca’s nipple between his fingers. “Think you might have forgotten whose bitch you are.”

“I’m your bitch,” Luca said immediately. “I – ah – I belong on my kn-knees with your –  _ah! –_  your c-cock in my ass—please, sir, take me, fuck me hard –  _please!_  – please, I, I deserve it—”

“Oh, you do, do you?”

“I – no—” Luca cursed inwardly. “I  _don’t_ deserve it, sir – not yet – let me, let me earn it, earn your cum in my hole—”

“Your slutty, filthy hole,” the Beast prompted.

“My slutty, filthy hole,” Luca repeated, hating him. “Which only –  _ah!_  – exists for you to use.”

“Better.” The Beast let go of his nipple. Luca collapsed onto his elbows, dizzy with relief. “Master would’ve loved to hear that. Will have to tell him, later. He’ll ask.”

Luca gritted his teeth and glared down at the stone beneath him. Oh, the Pig  _would_  ask, would want every bloody detail recounted for him to rub his poxy stub of a yard to, like he was no doubt doing right now, somewhere in the audience, imagining what his slave would relate to him after the show…

Then the Beast’s hand was between Luca’s legs again, cupping his prick, and Luca didn’t think of the Pig anymore, only of that hand and what it might do.

“Master likes to watch,” the Beast murmured, breath hot in Luca’s bloodied ear.

Luca closed his eyes. “I know.”

“Can’t do much else, mind. Not with what he’s got.” The Beast’s thrusts slowed even more until he was barely moving. Each thrust pushed Luca’s pelvis forward, pressing his prick against the Beast’s hand. “Can’t fuck you himself. That’s why he’s got me. I’m his cock, see.” On the word ‘cock’ the Beast squeezed, only a little, only enough to make Luca shiver. He stilled his hips, balls flush against Luca’s crack. “Go on. Fuck yourself on it like a good little bitch.”

Luca obeyed. It felt like sawing himself in half. The oil Bagoas had prepared him with so meticulously was long gone, and all Luca had for lubricant was the Beast’s spending and a little of his own blood. It hurt. It hurt in a dull, bruised way when he pushed back against the Beast’s crotch and burned raw and aching when he pulled forward. Luca gritted his teeth and closed his eyes and thought of the Saxam ambassador. Tall, he’d be, and muscled from all that riding and fighting. He’d smell good, clean, like soap, with just a hint of fresh sweat, and when he smiled one corner of his mouth would quirk up, and his eyes would go bright and soft and kind…

Suddenly, the stage-light shifted. The god had arrived. Luca went weak with relief.

The Beast pulled out of Luca, leaving him to slump over his elbows on the altar, all his limbs shaking and his ass feeling blessedly empty. He did a quick mental inventory and found himself bruised and exhausted but whole. There was a roar of laughter from the audience. Luca forced himself to roll over and up onto his knees.

A strange sight greeted him. Melchior, masked and robed in silver, was waving his sword around in front of him like a blind man’s cane. The Beast advanced, cock in hand and face split with a wide grin. Melchior struck—the Beast made a grab for the wooden sword—but by then it wasn’t where it had been, and the blade went crashing down against the Beast’s side.

Usually the patrons who fought as Melchior were gentlemen with soft hands who’d only dare to play the warrior in pantos. They quaked and cowered before the Beast and could never bring themselves to do more than poke the sword in his general direction. Not this patron. His confusion must have been an act, and a clever one. He was quick as a dancer on his feet, wielding the sword with practiced grace. Luca remembered a story he’d read once about men in Iberia who fought bulls armed with nothing but a red cape and a lance. The Beast certainly looked like a bull, rearing up with those horns on his head. And Melchior was brave as a matador, not so much as flinching when the Beast swatted at him. He dealt the Beast a thump about the pate that knocked him to the ground and gave him a sound kick to the ass as he scrambled offstage. Luca bit his cheek to stifle a giggle. Apparently Melchior had a sense of justice as well as a sense of humor.

When Melchior turned to face him the laugh in Luca’s throat turned into a choked gasp. Lady, it was the redhaired man! Luca knew him even under the god’s half-mask by the ink on his sleeve. Not just a scholar, then, but a prince of the blood. Luca almost laughed, though it was hardly funny. The lord stood, swaying, eyes a shadow. Luca held out his hand.

Melchior dropped his sword. He stumbled toward Luca like a drunk. His hand was calloused, not like a lord’s. Like a warrior’s, maybe. Unthinking, Luca twined his fingers with Melchior’s and pulled him closer.

The god tumbled forward, bearing Luca down on the altar. His body was hard, sharp, all muscles and angles. The silver robe flowed loose about his shoulders. His shirt was undone; Luca could see dark nipples cresting over the neck of it. His breath stank like a distillery, but beneath that was the clean soap-and-sweat smell Luca had imagined for the Saxam ambassador.

When Melchior kissed his throat, Luca lost his breath.

Melchior lifted his head and gazed down at Luca. His eyes…ah, Lady, his eyes were grey as storm, and warm, and somehow puzzled, as though Luca were something he couldn’t quite figure out.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

His voice was thick with booze and smoke and edged with silver’s slurring, but those  _words_ —Luca had heard them before, of course, but never said like that…except …

No. He bit his lip, hard, to remind himself.  _Stupid whore_. Still, he couldn’t keep himself from raising a hand, shivering at his own daring, to touch the god’s rough cheek.

Melchior caught his hand and kissed him, palm and arm and shoulder. He brushed his mouth against the juncture of Luca’s neck and jaw, but, teasing, didn’t stray upward to his lips—lips which Luca would never would have admitted to parting despite himself. He felt hot and dumb and his skin burned when the lord’s lips had met it. Lady, what was  _wrong_ with him? Was it the god, like Bagoas had said? Had he been possessed or something? Or perhaps this lord was one of those demons they told stories about, who crawled into the beds of virgins and made them ache between their thighs…

Melchior drew back, long hair tickling Luca’s chest. He was a dark shape against the stage-lights. Luca looked up into Melchior’s shadowed face, wondering if he really were a demon. Would it be all right to feel so fevered, for a demon?

But surely a demon’s voice would be all smooth and dark and mirthful, not nervous like the lord’s when he leaned forward, so serious, and whispered, “I’m going to kiss you now.”

Oh.

_Oh._

The  _taste_  of him—it was cigarettes and wine and yesterday’s hangover, singed around the edges with the clean tang of silver. And his hands, his hands were so gentle as they cupped Luca’s face, but the kiss, Lady, he kissed  _urgently_ , as though Luca were the only thing to keep him alive.

Then, suddenly, he pulled away. Luca blinked groggily. He felt rather like he’d just woken up from a very pleasant dream. Why did the lord stop? Was there a fire or something? Had someone died?

The lord reached down and Luca wet his lips expectantly. But instead of taking Luca’s face in his hands again, he took hold of Ganymene’s mask and, roughly, ripped it away. Luca heard it clatter on the floor. He went still, as he had learned to do when men became angry at him. And the lord was angry. Gods, his  _face_ —Luca had never seen anyone so wracked and contorted with speechless rage before, white and shaking and forming soundless words. Luca braced himself for the blow.

But no blow came. Instead Melchior backed away and, stumbling over himself with haste, ran from the room. Luca was left alone on the stage.

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

The inn was one of those Paradiso after-fuck establishments, cheap beds and cheaper booze. It was the sort of place you could stumble into after dawn woke you prostrate in a gutter. This was fortunate for Robert, because that was exactly the position he found himself in.

“Gin and tonic,” Robert told the barkeep, sliding onto a stool with a wince for his aching back. “Light on the tonic.”

The barkeep took in Robert’s rain-soaked hair, wine-soaked cloak, and sewage-soaked boots in a single disinterested glance. No doubt it wasn’t the worst he’d seen on a Bacchanal morning. While he fixed the drink, Robert attempted to smooth his hair back into some semblance of a lord’s knot. It stubbornly resisted. Appropriate, really. He’d never felt less of a noble in his life.

When the gin arrived, Robert knocked it back in a gulp. The vegetable bitterness of it went a long way towards clearing his head. Of course, having a clear head meant that certain details of the night before came rushing back with punishing lucidity.

“I am a fool,” Robert informed the barkeep matter-of-factly. “Very possibly the worst fool the world has ever seen.”

“Don’t know about that, sir,” said the barkeep, rubbing the shine from a glass with a blackened rag. “There’s always that lord wossname, what climbed into the rhinoc’rous cage at the king’s menagerie and got hisself gored to death.”

Robert winced again. “My father, actually.”

The barkeep almost dropped the glass. “I – I didn’t mean nothin’ by it—”

“No, you’re quite right,” Robert said, trying to massage the ache from his temples. “Congenital idiocy. All that inbreeding, no doubt. And don’t look so alarmed, I’m not going to challenge you to a duel for the family honor. Nothing so melodramatic. I’ll be quite content to punish you with my company as you keep the drinks coming.”

The barkeep nodded hastily. “I’ve a nice dry gin in the back if you’d prefer it, m’lord.”

“No, give me the cheap stuff,” said Robert. “If I’m going to keep up the family reputation for drunken stupidity I may as well leave my pretensions at the door.”

The barkeep nodded again, this time a polite incline of the head, coupled with a rather awkward bow. When the drink arrived, there was a slice of lime in it. Robert decided not to comment.

The gin went down less easy this time. Grandfather had insisted that Robert cultivate a palate for fine wine, and drinking bad malt liquor seemed to offend every particle of his tongue. He congratulated himself for managing not to spit the astringent stuff back into the glass.

“My grandfather’s drink, this,” Robert told the barkeep. “It puts him in a pliable mood. I’m sure to pour him one whenever I want my allowance raised.” He took a deep, savoring sip, and gagged. “Ughn. I prefer wine myself, but after tonight—” He shook his head. “Never mind. Pour me another?”

Two drinks later, Robert was beginning to think that it wasn’t that bad, really. Rather earthy, as a matter of fact. Like licking bark.

“It  _is_  hereditary, you know,” he told the barkeep, leaning over the bar. “Stupidity. At least on my father’s side. I think my grandfather must have gotten the recessive gene for sense, but him aside, we’ve been idiots all the way back to the second age. Bloody mooncalfs all. Ever in love, ever out…My glass is conspicuously empty, you know.”

Another drink later, Robert was seriously considering giving up wine altogether. Things had gone rather fuzzy around the edges and his insides were pleasingly warm and rumbly.

“It’s  _forgetting_  that’s the problem, you see. And just when you think you’ve managed it—” He trailed off. “What was I talking about again?”

“You were explaining to me about your Lord Adrian what gave you the drip,” said the barkeep helpfully.

Robert winced. “Ah. Yes. Right. I think that indicates another drink is in order.”

Another drink was quickly furnished. Robert downed it, pushed the empty glass back across the bar, and wiped his mouth with his hand.

“Right,” said Robert. “I’m going to tell you a story. It’s important – terribly important that I tell it to someone. And here you are. Someone of absolutely no consequence who has to listen to me. Perfect audience, really.”

“Glad to be of service, m’lord,” said the barkeep, refilling Robert’s glass.

“Quite right,” said Robert. “What did you say your name was?”

“They call me Half,” said the barkeep. “Half Johnson.”

Robert choked on his drink. “I – what an interesting name.”

“’Cos I’m half Johnson, y’see,” the barkeep explained. “On me mum’s side.”

“Ah,” said Robert. “Right.  _That_ sort of…johnson.”

“Your story, m’lord?” the barkeep prompted.

“Indeed.” Robert drained his glass and pushed it across the bar to Half for a refill. “But before I tell it, I must ask if you have ever been in love.”

The barkeep squinted. “Once,” he said. “Name was Fanny. ’Prenticed to a dressmaker in Drewer’s Market.”

Robert nodded sagely, trying to communicate that he was one well versed in the ways of seducing seamstresses. “Beautiful, was she?”

“Face like a hatchet. But she had a bosom—” The barkeep made an expressive gesture, his face working as he tried to think of an appropriate adjective. He settled on, “ _Phwaor._ ”

“Ah. Yes. Bosom,” said Robert, trying not to shudder. “So what happened with this Fanny item?”

“Waited too long,” said the barkeep ruefully. “She pulled a runner with some Island darkie who ran a donkey show behind the Dog and Reel.”

Robert choked on his drink again. “You – you don’t say.”

“Yeah, he had that donkey trained up a treat,” said the bartender. “Could do all sorts of tricks. Seen it jump through an ’oop of fire once, I did.”

“Ah,” said Robert faintly. “Right.  _That_ sort of…donkey show.”

“Anyway, I married her sister,” the barkeep concluded. “What about you, m’lord? Ever been in love?”

Robert shook his head. “Not me, no,” he replied. “But a friend of mine, now,  _he_ was in love. The sort of mad, stupid love they write epics about. Love that knocks the wind out of you, love that, that shakes the trees, moves the stars, you know.” Robert waved his hand. “That sort of thing. Leave it to the poets to describe. What do I know, I’m just a drunk. But this friend of mine, he was a lover for the ages.

“The first thing you have to know about this friend is that he was a whore’s bastard. His mother was a dance-hall girl, and his father—well, she said he was a noble, but she said a lot of things. He wasn’t terribly bright, this friend, and not terribly handsome either. Bit of a shite protagonist, to be honest with you, but there you are.

“So this friend of mine was a boot-boy in the country manor of a minor noble, a man of certain appetites which his father, the old lord, forbad him from indulging in at home. One day the old lord died, as old lords are wont to do, and before the earth was fresh on his grave his darling son had brought a boy home from the city.

“This boy…Well. He changed everything.”

Robert paused to take a draft of the fresh drink the barkeep pushed across to him. He raked a shaky hand through his hair and continued,

“I told you I wasn’t a poet, and it would take one to do him justice, but suffice it to say that this boy was beautiful. Beautiful like – like the sun is beautiful when you’ve lived all your life in the dark. And my friend, this stupid, stupid friend of mine, he loved this boy, I swear to you, more than anyone has ever loved. He was fourteen, just getting some down on his lip and thinking himself a man for it, but this boy made him feel as weak and dumb as a swaddling babe. Love like that – it’s more like pain than anything.

“But the funny thing, the truly mad and ridiculous thing, is that this boy loved my friend as well. You wouldn’t have believed it, you know, this, this perfect creature loving some gangly moon-eyed peasant with crooked teeth and more nose than sense, but he did, gods, and I didn’t even know—my friend, my  _friend_  didn’t even know, how lucky he was. To have someone like that love someone like him.”

Robert stopped abruptly and became very busy with finishing his drink. The barkeep politely pretended not to notice that Robert had become suspiciously wet about the eyes.

“If you know anything about love stories you’ll know that this one was doomed from the start,” Robert went on once he’d drained the glass. “The boot-boy and the bed-slave. Sounds like an opera, doesn’t it? And not a particularly good one at that. But this friend of mine, he didn’t know anything about love stories, or operas, and he thought, he truly did, that his love would last forever.

“Business had kept the noble lord away from the country for most of the year, and that fall he decided to move his household to Lyonesse. This friend of mine, his grandmam was the noble’s cook. She feared they’d be caught, the boy and my friend, that the noble would kill them. She begged my friend to leave the boy alone. He should have listened, but he was stupid with love, drunk on it. The idea that someone could take away the boy, his boy—it was madness.

“Of course we were caught.”

Robert stopped, coughing back what was certainly not a sob. When he began again his voice sounded strange, echoing, as though coming from a very long distance.

“Well, my friend wasn’t killed, but he and his grandmam were tossed into the street without references. Which, in Lyonesse, in winter, is close enough to a death sentence. But the boy—” He broke off. When he was able to speak, the words came choked. “The boy – he…Well. My friend never saw him again. And later he found out – that the noble had – had murdered him. Strangled him to death.”

There was a long silence. Robert stared into his empty glass. The barkeep wiped down another tumbler with his filthy rag.

“So what happened to your friend?” the barkeep asked carefully.

“He died,” Robert replied. “Killed himself. He couldn’t live without the boy, you see. To live, after that—it would have been cowardice. It wasn’t the sort of love you can survive.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

 

“ _What did you do!_ ”

Luca was not given time to answer. Master Boq’s slap caught him across the cheek and sent him reeling back into the wall. Before he could catch himself a closed fist spiked with rings smashed into his mouth. He fell to his knees, cupping a hand over his mouth to keep the blood from splashing on the floor. He knew, with the part of his mind not gibbering with terror, that if he ruined the tiles he’d be in even worse trouble. Though given the trouble he was already in, he wasn’t sure how it could get worse.

“You made him  _run_  –  _away – from – you!_ ” Master Boq punctuated his words with hard kicks to Luca’s stomach. “How could you have displeased him enough to send him fleeing after only _thirty – seconds – in – your – presence!_ ”

Luca doubled over, tasting bile and blood at once. He registered that this was the appropriate time to begin begging for mercy, but his teeth were chattering too hard to form a coherent sentence.

“Get him up,” Master Boq ordered Sark.

Sark grabbed Luca by the hair and yanked his head up. Tears sprang to his eyes as strands were ripped from his scalp by Sark’s ungentle fingers. Through the film of wetness, Master Boq looked like a giant man-shaped flan wobbling with indignation. Under other circumstances Luca would have had to swallow a laugh. Now it was all he could do to keep from vomiting.

“Describe to me,” said Master Boq with a sudden dreadful calm, “in exquisite detail, exactly what happened between you and his lordship.”

Luca licked his lip carefully, wincing at the bright flare of pain from the split. “I don’t – master, I swear, I don’t know, everything was – like it always is—he chased off the B– the centaur, and then he came over to me, and he, and we – kissed—” Luca shuddered a little, remembering with shame the hungry way he had met the lord’s mouth. Could that have been it? Had the lord been offended by his impropriety?

“Go on,” Master Boq prompted impatiently.

“The – the kiss.” Luca had to force the words. “I think – master, please forgive me, I – when he kissed me I—”

Master Boq narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t become…aroused?”

“No!” Luca said violently. “No, master, not that, I swear. But – when I responded, I – his mouth – he was so – it felt —”

Sark interrupted him with a harsh bark of laughter. “The little bitch liked it.”

Luca felt his face become suffused with heat. He bit his lip, forgetting the split, and then, gasping, purposefully bit down harder.  _Stupid whore. Stupid whore._ Stupid _whore…_

Master Boq’s expression shifted from fury to mild disgust. “Is this true, boy?”

Luca couldn’t answer, couldn’t further disgrace himself by telling the truth and couldn’t bring himself to lie. He sank his teeth into his lip until whiteness prickled at the edges of his vision and tried very hard to disappear.

“Master, I was watching from offstage, and I promise you, I saw no sign whatsoever that the boy’s response to Melchior was at all inappropriate,” Bogoas put in smoothly.

“Hm.” Master Boq narrowed his eyes further, until they all but disappeared into his face. “Well, something must have set the lord off.”

“If I may be so bold, master,” Bagoas interjected, “when I was preparing his lordship, I could not help but notice that he was very drunk.”

“A freeman drunk on Bacchanal?” sneered Master Boq. “Great gods, I can hardly contain my shock.”

Bagoas inclined his head. “As you say, master. However, if it pleases you, I cannot but recall that during my…preparations…his lordship was, how shall I say, experiencing that particular insufficiency associated with excessive enjoyment of the fruits of the vine?”

Master Boq furrowed his brow. “He could not…rouse himself to the occasion?”

“I am afraid not, master.”

“Huh.” Master Boq jerked his chins at Luca. “Did you notice his lordship having difficulties in that area, boy?”

Behind Master Boq, Bagoas widened his eyes meaningfully at Luca. Luca took his cue and nodded quickly.

“In which case the boy can hardly be blamed,” Bagoas concluded.

“You overstep yourself, Bagoas,” said Master Boq coldly. “In my experience a pretty slave with an artful mouth and willing ass can easily overcome the effects of hard liquor.”

Luca gasped at the unfairness of it. How many times had Master Boq been so fuddled he’d fallen asleep with Luca still trying desperately to stir his limp prick?

“Indeed,” Master Boq went on, clearly building up a head of steam, “I can only blame the boy’s failure to secure the lord as a patron upon his own inadequacy.” He rounded on Luca, jowls quivering. Luca flinched instinctively. “And this, after all I have done for you!” He pressed a hand to his bosom in a gesture of injured benevolence. “After the  _expense!_  My generosity clearly overcame my reason. I ought to march you down to the docks and sell you to the first brothel that offers for you.”

Luca went cold. No. Not that. Not again. Not left on the floor in his own little hell with men already crowding around to take turns with him…

A sob caught in his throat, choking him.

“But no,” Master Boq continued, lowering his voice to a purr, “too easy a fate for you by far. Why lose so much of my investment when the Councilor grows impatient for your purchase? My contacts in the trade tell me that he and that slave of his have rather… _particular_ tastes which I am, of course, too careful of my stock to cater to. But perhaps you’ve grown bored of the Harlequin. I daresay you’d rather entertain his lordship. They’ll use that lovely body of yours quite unspeakably, I’m afraid. Such a pity. If only you’d done as I asked…”

Luca realized, in a distant way, that he was hyperventilating. His breath was coming in short alarmed hiccups and the sound was so ridiculous, so comical, that he laughed, only it came out as a stuttering hiccup.

“Stop that at once,” Master Boq ordered irritably. “Control yourself, boy.”

Luca pressed his hand over his mouth, swallowing desperately. “Please,” he managed to croak out between his fingers. “Please. I’m sorry. Master. Please. Please. Don’t. Let me stay. I’ll do anything. Please. Please…”

Master Boq pursed his rouged lips, making a show of considering. Luca folded at the waist and pressed his forehead against the floor. He wasn’t thinking about the tiles anymore, only of the Beast and the things he would snarl while fucking into him with a frothing fever that was not quite human.

“Please,” he whispered again.

Master Boq sighed, one of his long wounded sighs that pitied and accused in equal measure. “I suppose that your worth to the House outweighs your transgression against me. Just.”

For a moment, Luca was sure that the relief had stopped his heart. He brushed the unbloodied corner of his mouth against his master’s slipper. “Thank you, sir. I hope – that is, I promise – to earn your mercy.”

“Oh, you will.” Master Boq nudged Luca’s chin with the toe of his slipper, forcing his gaze up. “You’ll have to be beaten, of course. And if you ever lose the House a patron again, I will sell you back to the fuckhouse I found you in.  _After_ giving the Councilor and his slave three days with you in a locked room. Do you understand, boy?”

Luca nodded fervently, gratefully. “Yes, master. Thank you, sir.”

Master Boq dismissed him with a disgusted wave of his hand and turned to Sark. “The cane, I think. And leave him tied to the horse for the night. I want to give him time to think about what he’s cost me.”

Sark looked thoughtfully down at Luca through a haze of cigarette smoke. “He’s dancing Ganymene again tomorrow,” he remarked.

“Oh. Yes.” Master Boq furrowed his brow. “Well, can’t you just use Tris?”

Bagoas shook his head. “Tris is hardly an adequate replacement, master. His singing voice is without equal, but his dancing…” He trailed off tactfully.

“Do we not have a brothel full of beautiful and highly trained boys?” Master Boq shouted. “Get one of them to do it!”

“The patrons bought tickets to see this one,” Sark said, jerking a thumb at Luca. “‘The Golden Bird Dances Ganymene.’ People’ll notice if it’s not him. There might be folks asking for their money back.”

The idea of refunds made Master Boq turn a delicate shade of mauve. He kicked at Luca in frustration and would have missed had Luca not moved conscientiously to offer his thigh for the blow.

“Fine. Put him out in the public room, then. Apprentice page’s rate. He can stop when he’s earned enough to recoup his lordship’s ticket price for this evening’s performance.”  
  
  
The passageway to the public room ran along the outer wall of the Harlequin. As Bagoas hustled Luca down the narrow corridor, hissing low and furiously in his ear, Luca imagined he could hear the faint pop pop of fireworks in the far-away sky.

“You’ll never make first whore now. How could you have ruined your chances so utterly? I sent his lordship out to you stiff and aching. You had only to bring him to pleasure. How was that too difficult for you?” Bagoas squeezed Luca’s arm bruising-hard to punctuate his point. “And what did he say to you? I saw his mouth move.”

Luca shook his head, feeling the dried gilt on the back of his neck crack and flake. He was suddenly, immensely tired. “Just – just that I was beautiful,” he whispered, “and that he wanted to kiss me.”

Bagoas _tch_ ed in frustration. He opened his mouth to say something else, but by then they had reached the arched entrance of the public room.

The public room was a great stone chamber like the mouth of a tomb. Candlelight flickered over bodies lounging and entwined, and in the undulating dimness the pornographic friezes that scrawled the walls almost seemed to move. The patrons here were merchants and tradespeople with slick-parted hair rumpled and too-careful elocution slurring into cant. They’d no doubt saved every brazen bit for Bacchanal with a Harlequin whore and cozened the rest from the till.

“A moment, sirs!” Bagoas announced, clapping his elegant hands together to command attention. “I have my master’s leave to offer this whore—” he pushed Luca forward— “the Golden Bird, jewel of Paradiso, for one night only at a fraction of his standard price. The bargain of the century, good my lords! An exquisite barbarian, as beautiful as the sun rising over the glacial mountains of his homeland. You’ll not find a more willing slut outside of the King’s own bed. Now, which of you esteemed gentlemen are interested in buying the most celebrated ass in Lyonesse?”

Laughter then, and raucous shouting from the patrons. Luca’s arm was grabbed by a man, thick-bearded and thicker-waisted with a butcher’s nicked palms. Luca could feel the smooth scars on his skin when the man groped between his legs. There was more laughter, jeering and aroused, but Luca registered it only distantly. He had gone as cold and smooth as glass. The body that the butcher pawed at was a thin, transparent thing. They couldn’t see  _him_ , the men whose eyes raked greedy over his body. They could only see through. Only through.

The butcher dragged him stumbling down the hallway, shadows swallowing the edges of guttering candlelight, shoved aside a gaudy curtain across one of the narrow antechambers not already occupied by a grunting patron and softly gasping whore. He shoved Luca inside with as little care as he’d given the curtains. A courtesy, this; he could have fucked Luca in the public room, a hundred leering gazes passing through him. Luca reminded himself to be grateful.

_Come here, little bird. Show me your gratitude._

The butcher pushed him up against the wall, grabbing handfuls of assflesh. A hocking spat, and wetness dribbled across Luca’s sore hole. He remembered to be grateful for that too before the man pushed in.

_Like light_ , he thought.  _Light passing through a pane of glass._

Once the butcher had finished Luca was steered back to the public room, thighs glistening with gold and seed. The next man had a sharp moustache and sharper teeth that teased the bloody indents the Beast had left on Luca’s shoulder. He murmured polite obscenities in Luca’s ear and drove in thin fingers alongside his thin cock. His semen was thick and copious and Luca clenched to hold it inside, telling himself to be grateful, grateful.

Even with cum slicking the passage, Luca couldn’t help crying out when the next man thrust into him with a cock as thick and unyielding as a cudgel. It felt like a deep blueblack bruise was being pinched and twisted, and the hurt of it lanced all the way to his teeth. The man with the cudgel-cock took his whimpers as encouragement and battered into him with brutal enthusiasm. He left Luca bent over the stained cot, collapsed in tremors of agony and exhaustion. Luca heard him remark to the man waiting outside that the bitch was wet as a woman down there and almost laughed, stupidly, hysterically, but bit into his lip instead until that one sharp pain eclipsed all the rest.

He lost count after that. There were no more trips to the public room; the men lined up outside the antechamber. After a while they didn’t even bother to pull the curtain closed. Luca tried to stay whole and cold and transparent but he could feel himself cracking as another and another and another stiff prick stabbed into him. It couldn’t hurt this much, light through glass, it couldn’t, couldn’t. In his mind the Saxam ambassador recoiled from him, disgusted, red hair falling into eyes the color of a storm.

Bagoas came in after some interminable period of time. He probed at Luca’s raw-gaping anus with clinical detachment, paying no heed to the small bitten-off noises that Luca muffled against the cot.

“Mouth only from now on, I think,” he said, voice almost, horribly, satisfied.

Luca was turned on his back. A man straddled his face, rubbing cock and balls and ass across still-bleeding lips. The stink of him, gods. Luca had gotten too used to nobles with their scented baths and cloying perfumes. He gagged, and gagged again as the man fed cock down his throat until his nose was crushed against pubic hair and tears were streaming down his cheeks. He tried desperately to breathe through his nose, licking and swallowing as best he could to make the man come faster. The cot dipped; someone grabbed his hand and closed it around their erection. It was already sticky, which either meant that the man had jerked off watching him get fucked or had fucked him himself. Luca didn’t want to know which. He moved his hand up and down, praying that this would end.

The man on his face was grinding down, bollocks tightening. He hissed a stream of expletives as he came, “fuck yes take it all little shit so good”, and Luca choked and swallowed and choked until the foul heaving weight was lifted off of him and he could breathe again.

He was still sucking down lungfuls of air when fingers twisted in his hair and yanked him to the floor. He landed on his knees in front of a man whose penis was already out of his trousers, red and almost vertical. Luca closed his eyes and opened his mouth. The man shoved in.

There were more after, a seemingly endless parade of men with their breeches unlaced and cocks in hand. Luca thought that it went faster this time, the fucking; or maybe it was just that he grayed out in his mind and the hours slipped away from underneath him. After some period that could have been a minute or a year, the room was suddenly, inexplicably empty and a blurred figure was bending over him. A bear, Luca thought, a bear with an ember between its teeth.

He shook his head and the figure slid into focus. No, not a bear. Sark, smoking a cig and looking down at him with that odd sideways expression that he could never decipher.

“Have I earned enough?” Luca managed to croak. He could barely hear himself. “Is it – over?”

Sark shrugged, exhaling a cloud of smoke into Luca’s face. “It would take a month to earn back the ticket price silver by silver. You’re done, though.”

He hooked a paw –  _Hand_ , Luca corrected himself – under his arm and hauled him to his feet. His knees buckled and he fell forward. Sark caught him like a bundle of clothes.

“Can you walk?”

Luca nodded, face buried in Sark’s broad chest. His jerkin was rough and warm and Luca had to fight the urge to slip into sleep. Sark clasped his arm around Luca’s waist and steered him forward.

Fortunately the dormitory was also in the old part of the Harlequin, accessible by a winding stone staircase that Sark had to half-carry Luca down. It was early still for Bacchanal, not yet dawn, and the halls that usually hummed with activity were almost eerily silent. Luca was glad. He didn’t want to be seen like this, hanging from Sark like a blind child with his face and ass a mess of paint and semen. Didn’t want to have to explain, to boys bright-eyed with interest, what he’d done to deserve it.

When they reached the bath, Asher was waiting. He was still made up for the night and scowling under thick layers of maquillage. Luca thought distractedly that he couldn’t let Asher do his own makeup again; his lipstick was smudged down his chin and the kohl around his eyes looked as though it had been applied during an earthquake.

“You look like hell,” was Asher’s greeting.

“Your eyeliner is crooked,” Luca returned, voice a rasp. “Shouldn’t you be working?”

Asher grinned. “Bagoas told me to see to you. Guess that means I’ve got the rest of the night off.”

“You’ll go right back upstairs once your pedant’s sorted out,” Sark barked around his cigarette.

Asher tucked in his chin and muttered, “Yes, sir.”

Sark pulled his arm away from Luca’s waist. Luca stumbled a little, but managed to stay upright. “Get yourself cleaned up,” Sark ordered him. “I’ll be back in an hour.” With that he turned and stalked out of the bath.

Luca let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding and sank ungracefully to his knees at the edge of the bath. So Sark would be taking his trade tonight after all, then. Gods, he wanted to sleep so badly…

“He’s not to bring you back out there, is he?” Asher asked, trying to sound indifferent.

Luca shook his head. “He’s got a book for me.”

“Oh,” said Asher, and then, “ _oh._ But he can’t think – he can’t be expecting to fuck you, can he? Not after—” He glanced at Luca’s ass, then looked quickly away. “I mean, you’re – you’re all – messed up.”

Luca shrugged. Even that movement hurt. “It’s only one more,” he said, and before Asher could respond he slid forward into the stale, frigid water until it closed over his head.

When he opened his eyes the world was all shades of green. He ached everywhere, split lip and ass most specific and persistently, but with a background of dull, sick throbbing from his ribs and stomach as well. Nothing felt broken, thank the Lady, but he’d be bruised as old fruit come morning.

He would have gladly sunk to the bottom of the bath like a stone and stayed there, but his burning lungs forced him up. Asher, crouching at the edge of the pool, scuttled back to avoid getting splashed.

“Watch it, Bagoas’ll let me have it if I ruin this stupid costume.” Asher twitched his trailing gauze sash out of the way irritably. “Here.”

He tossed Luca a scented bar of soap. Luca, nerves frayed ragged, flinched away and had to fish the soap out of the water. He lathered himself into a froth, shedding scales of paint into the water, and scrubbed with a stiff-bristled brush until his skin was bright pink and the bathwater was swampy with flaked paint and maquillage. After he couldn’t put it off any longer, Luca closed his eyes, summoned his courage, and reached down to scour the crack of his ass.

Ah, Lady, it hurt. How it hurt. Like broken glass. Luca buried long moaning screams into his arm and scrubbed, scrubbed until his knees buckled and all he saw was white.

When he climbed clumsily out of the bath, still wracked with residual shivers of pain, Asher was waiting with a towel. Luca dried himself gingerly, hissing at the pressure on his sore ribs and stomach. With shaking fingers, he tried to tangle out the wet braids that hung around his face.

“Don’t.” Asher caught his hand. “I can do that.”

Luca nodded jerkily. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Can you walk?”

The same question Sark had asked. Luca knew better than to say yes this time. Asher pushed his shoulder under Luca’s arm, grabbed his waist and then, when Luca cried out, moved his hand lower. They were almost the same height, though Asher was years younger, and with Asher stooping and Luca half on tip-toe they lurched down the corridor, giggling weakly at how odd they must look.

Luca’s room—or, more accurately, the third whore’s room—was a small, narrow chamber next to the main dormitory. It had been a beer cellar when the Harlequin was a wealthy merchant’s palazzo, and the packed earth floor still smelled like hops. There was a rag-stuffed pallet in the corner – a luxury after years of sharing piles of straw with snoring bedmates – and a wash-stand beside; against the opposite wall stood a rough-hewn vanity with a mirror that was only a little cracked, and a stool scavenged from the old parlor.

Asher helped him into his robe and Luca sat awkwardly, pulling his leg under him so not to put pressure on his bottom. He glanced at the mirror and grimaced. His reflection resembled a drowned dowager’s, swathed in faded silk with long curls hanging wetly about a damp, hollow-eyed face. He looked away quickly.

Asher was as inept at taking braids out as putting them in. Still, his fingers working clumsily through Luca’s hair felt soothing, gentle after the rough hands of the men. Luca drifted into a half-sleep as he worked, the chorus of a thousand great and little pains fading to a manageable white noise.

“Saw you hit the Beast,” Asher said suddenly.

Luca startled awake. In the mirror, Asher was frowning determinedly at the braid he was undoing.

“What’d he say to you?” he asked, without looking up.

Luca shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Asher didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “Was it about me?”

Luca opened his mouth. Closed it.

“He said – when he was – you know. Rubbing on me. He started saying—” Asher broke off, winding the braid around his hand like a tourniquet. “He said he was going to do – things to me. Fuck me, but worse – choke me, and – cut me…” He shook his head, spasmodically, as though trying to shake something loose. “He said he’d make you watch.”

Luca let out a long stuttering breath. For the second time that night he felt as though he might vomit. He turned in the chair, ignoring the protest from his ribs. Asher was pale with the effort to hide his panic. His hand was clenched in Luca’s hair so tightly that his knuckles were going white.

Luca forced his voice calm. “Asher. Listen to me. He can’t do that. Master Boq won’t let him. I won’t let him. I’ll kill him, do you understand me? I swear to you, if he – if he does – anything like that – he’s dead.”

Asher made a small, choked noise. Luca opened his arms and Asher barreled into him, almost knocking him off the chair. He buried his face in Luca’s shoulder and scrabbled at his back, not crying, never that, but grinding his teeth so hard that Luca could feel the vibration against his chest.

“I’ll keep you safe,” Luca whispered into his hair. “Promise.”

“How sweet.”

Luca dropped his arms and Asher sprang away as though he’d touched something scalding. Behind him, Luca saw Sark leaning against the doorframe, rolling a cigarette between thumb and forefinger.

“If you’re quite finished…” he drawled.

Asher glanced at Luca, who nodded slightly. Asher scowled, scuffing his heel and working his mouth around as though struggling to keep it shut.

“Get back to work, Asher,” Luca said softly.

Asher’s scowl deepened. He went reluctantly, glaring at Sark through his hair as he sidled around him. He cast Luca one last, long look before stomping off down the corridor.

Luca stood, letting his robe fall open. Sark watched, expression unchanging, as Luca skimmed his fingertips lightly over his chest. He stifled a gasp as he touched his nipples, already purpling from the Beast’s rough treatment earlier. Sark tucked his unsmoked cig behind his ear. Luca’s cue. He walked over to the man, trying not to limp, trying harder not to think about how much getting fucked again would hurt.

Sark was gentle, like he always was at first. He ran his fingers through Luca’s wet hair, cupped his head, then moved down to slip the robe from his shoulders. The air was chilly, and Luca, still damp, felt his skin prickle into goosebumps. He shivered.

“Are you cold, love?” Sark asked, stroking Luca’s back.

_He only ever calls me love when we’re alone_ , Luca thought.

“No, sir,” he said, like he was supposed to. “Not – not with you here to warm me.”

Sark smiled, one of those rare smiles that wasn’t cruel or sarcastic or mocking. “You say the prettiest things,” he murmured, sliding his hand down to caress the swell of Luca’s ass.

Luca couldn’t help it. He flinched.

Immediately he knew he’d done the wrong thing. Sark pulled away, face contorted with fury.

“Can you not even stand to be touched by me?” he said, with awful, dangerous calm.

“No! Sir – please—”

The hand that had cradled Luca’s head moved down to grip the back of his neck so hard Luca was sure his spine would snap. Sark dragged him stumbling across the room and threw him down onto the bed.

Luca landed on his back. Instinctively, he spread his legs, drawing his knees up to his chest and pulling apart his buttocks to expose his aching hole.

There was a long moment. Sark loomed over him, breathing shallowly, jaw clenched. Luca began to tremble with the strain of holding himself so very, very still.

Suddenly Sark moved. Quick as a striking snake, he seized Luca’s legs—shoved them, not further apart, but together—and unlaced his breeches, eyes never leaving Luca’s face. He spat into his palm, slicked his cock, and pushed—Luca stopped breathing—pushed—between his thighs.

Luca thought, for a moment, that he’d missed, but no, how could he miss, with such a gaping target to aim for—and then Sark began to thrust, and he understood. Quickly, he pushed his hand down, made a tight O with his fingers. Sark fucked him like that, through his thighs and into his hand, looking down at him with an expression that Luca could not name.

He finished quickly and silently, collapsing onto his elbows before coming in two short bursts. Luca dropped his thighs open so that Sark could lie between them, panting hotly against his chest as his spent cock slicked across Luca’s stomach.

Luca brought his palm to his mouth and, as Sark watched, licked the man’s seed from between his fingers. A violent shudder passed through Sark like a current. He crushed his mouth to Luca’s, muffling his yelp of pain as the split on his lip was reopened. Sark pulled away. He licked the corner of Luca’s mouth almost apologetically.

They stayed like that for a moment, Sark’s lips pressed to Luca’s cheek and Luca trying to stay silent as the weight of the body on top of him compressed his aching ribs. Finally Sark moved, rolling off of Luca and onto his feet. He laced his breeches and refastened the collar of his jerkin, businesslike.

“He’ll probably have me beat you after the show tomorrow,” Sark said, not looking at Luca.

“I know.”

Sark nodded, compressing his lips into a thin line. He looked as though he were struggling to say something, or not to. Instead he reached into his jerkin and withdrew the book.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting your payment.” His voice was edged with its usual singsong scorn.

Luca sat up too quickly—his ribs punished him with an especially vicious throb—and reached out, not quite daring to grab the book although he dearly wanted to. Sark ignored his outstretched hand, instead flipping the book open and fanning through its pages.

“What is it you see in these old things anyway?” he asked, affecting indifference. “Do you rub your little prick to them or something?”

Luca dropped his gaze. “No, sir.”

“Good.” Sark tossed the book carelessly onto the floor, and laughed as Luca scrambled to pick it up. “Eager, aren’t you? Yes, gobble it down, love. All the sooner you’ll be gobbling down my cock.” He grinned with his teeth. “Looking forward to that, aren’t you?”

Luca hugged the book to his chest. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I love to suck your cock.”

Sark laughed again, high and false and cruel. “Oh, love,” he said, voice hard, “you do say such pretty things.”

Luca waited until he could no longer hear Sark’s heavy footsteps echoing down the hall. Then, slowly, carefully, he brought the book up to his nose and inhaled the odor of dust and ink and parchment. He caressed the cover, tracing the ornate gilt letters with his fingertip, and then, slowly, slowly, opened to the first page.

By the thin wedge of light from the hallway, Luca began to read.


	7. Chapter 7

Robert was drunk.

He knew intellectually that he was drunk. Still, some gin-soaked part of him insisted that he was not in fact drunk, but merely very, very merry. Also slightly disoriented – how, exactly, had he ended up on the floor again? But no matter; excessive merriness could no doubt induce fits of disorientation. And, apparently, giggling.

A bushy-bearded face swam above Robert, looking concerned. Robert knew, for reasons which were a bit foggy at the moment, that the man’s name was Half Johnson. This amused him. He giggled.

When the face spoke its voice sounded like an echo down a long tunnel. “Are you alright, m’lord?”

“Capital,” Robert assured him, squinting suspiciously at the man’s beard. It was not a trustworthy beard, he decided. You could hide things in that beard. Secrets. Knives. Nobody would know.

“I think,” Robert said, pushing himself up on his elbows, “I think I need another drink. No, no, don’t look at me like that, it’s perfectly fine, I merely have a, a sort of medical condition whose symptoms include improvising maudlin poetry and undergoing sudden bursts of hysterical laughter that cause me to topple off barstools. I am  _not_ drunk!”

“Course you en’t, m’lord,” the tavern-keeper said doubtfully, helping Robert to his feet and propping him against the bar.

“I have an excellent constitution when it comes to alcohol,” Robert informed him, swaying slightly.

“I believe you, m’lord,” the tavern-keeper said, signaling to someone out of Robert’s narrowing field of vision. “Why, I’d reckon a pint of strong whiskey on top of all that gin en’t nothing more n’ mother’s milk to a fine gen’leman like youself.”

“Yes,” Robert agreed. He rested his head on the top of the bar. It was sticky and smelled like beer and vomit. “Yes, but also no. Because I’m not a gen’leman. Or even a gentleman. No. I’m a pathetic, failed excuse of a…failure. Who fails at things. Important things. Things that matter. Things in brothels.”

“Ah, well,” the tavern-keeper said sagely, “all men have that failing from time to time, m’lord.”

“Yes,” Robert sighed. “Wait, what?”

“I’ll take it from here, father,” said someone from behind Robert. There was a cool hand on his neck and he moaned, leaning into the touch. “Well, you are in your cups, y’lordship,” said whoever it was, sounding amused.

Robert turned too quickly and lost his balance. He stumbled into strong arms, head buried in a red tunic smelling not unpleasantly of young wine and sawdust.

“I like your shirt,” Robert told the man. He lifted his head and found himself looking into a pair of pale green eyes, calm and implacable. They made Robert think of sweat on a bottle of iced ale, frost on the grass on the morning of winter’s first chill, and his cock reminded him again that he hadn’t, after everything, come yet tonight.

“Thank you,” said the green-eyed stranger. “It’s my favorite color.” He swept his gaze across Robert’s hair, red as autumn leaves and plastered to his forehead with sweat, and Robert could feel the man’s interest raise the hair on his nape.

“I also,” Robert said, “like your face.”

The stranger laughed, revealing a dark emptiness in his mouth where one of his back teeth had been knocked out. Robert wondered what it would be like to tongue the place where a tooth had once grown, lift the tunic and run his hands over the man’s work-roughened skin.

“Would you flatter me if you were sober, m’lord?” the man asked, still smiling in amusement at Robert’s clumsy flirting. His hair was a dark honey-color, cropped close to his scalp, and Robert resisted the urge to touch it.

“Probably,” Robert admitted.

It was true. He patterned every lover on Luca and as a result was a fool for blond boys, the prettier the better. This man was not pretty – and looked the type to knock down anyone who accused him of being so – but he was warm and free and  _here_  and Robert needed to lose himself in sex and stupidity now more than ever.

The prospect of ejaculating into something other than his hand cleared some of the drunken fog from Robert’s mind. He had a talent for being charming under adverse circumstances, honed by years at Court, and summoned the skill now, standing up as straight as he was able and letting his features settle into an abashed grin.

“I apologize,” he said, slurring a little but not too much. “Usually I’m not so blunt. I fear whiskey has stolen all my clever lines.” He wondered if he would fall over if he stopped gripping the bar with a white-knuckled hand and decided not to try.

“Along with your balance,” the stranger observed.

Robert laughed. He ran fingers through his hair, discreetly trying to get it to fall thick around his shoulders instead of lying in limp, clammy knots. “The creature makes fools of us all,” he said. “But I probably shouldn’t go home tonight. The gods have a sense of humor when it comes to making sport of drunk men.”

The stranger made a luck-sign and Robert followed out of habit, though his hands were more clumsy in the gesture.

“Have you rooms here to let?” Robert continued. “Something private with a big, comfortable bed and thick walls?”

Hook baited.

The stranger grinned. It was full of things unspoken. “Oh yes, m’lord,” he said. “Plenty.”

Robert leaned forward, ignoring the dizziness threatening to topple him. “Share it with me,” he murmured.

This was the dangerous part of the game, where he might either find himself afterwards with either a well-sucked cock or a knife in his belly. But as he pulled back he saw that the man was flushed and bright-eyed, and very much not fumbling in his tunic for something sharp and pointy.

“Yes,” the man said a little breathlessly, touching Robert’s arm with a shy sort of eagerness. “I – yes. Yes.”

Hook bitten. Robert rejoiced silently.

It was of that particular breed of tavern room that was musty with other peoples’ smells, floors worn by the scuffing of unfamiliar boots and mattress indented with the shape of a body not Robert’s own—almost offensively foreign, oppressive with the feel of other long-departed transients whose essences lingered still. The windows were pasted over with brown butcher paper beneath thick old curtains and the walls were bare, plaster cracking and stained by the gaslamp’s oily smoke. Still, it was clean and the bed was, as promised, both big and comfortable. That was all Robert needed tonight.

The stranger – whose name, he had told Robert, was Justios – seemed nervous, fiddling with his vest buttons as though unsure of whether or not to undo them, then dropping his hands when Robert smiled at his uncertainty, blushing furiously. On another occasion Robert might have said something unkind – he wasn’t used to inexperienced partners – but remembered his first clumsy fumblings with Luca, and the younger boy’s patience. He said nothing.

Feeling the warm rush of alcohol from his brain to his groin Robert stumbled forward, nearly upending a footstool, and met Justios’s mouth with a clash of lips and teeth almost violent in its urgency. If Justios had been prettier, like Luca in more than just his hair, Robert would have been gentler, but the feel of thick arms and calloused palms reminded him that this was a man whose mouth his tongue was exploring. This wasn’t love, or even sex, it was a casual fuck in a Paradiso tavern, and Robert couldn't spend what little care he had in him to give on a bouncer.

Justios made up in enthusiasm what he lacked in skill, shoving his tongue forward to meet Robert’s and slamming their bodies together with near bruising force. They swayed like saplings in a breeze. It was war as much as it was kissing, war without sides or weapons or treaties, just the heady anarchy of conquest.

Somehow, still locked together and staggering over each other, they made it to the bed and collapsed in a tangle of limbs. Robert ended up with one foot on the floor and the other knee between Justios’s thighs. Justios’s eyes were glazed and fixed on the ceiling as he ground slowly against Robert’s leg; his tunic had been pulled up around his armpits and Robert was sucking one puckered nipple, rolling the other between thumb and forefinger. Justios tasted as he smelled, of cheap wine, of salty sweat. Robert moaned softly against the other man’s chest, suddenly feeling everything at once: the wrinkled areola pressed against his lips, Justios’s hard cock against his knee, his own cock kept from full arousal by too much to drink. Robert thought of Luca and the satyr. The booze in his stomach threatened to become bile.

“Something wrong?” Justios grunted when Robert’s mouth stilled.

“Nothing,” Robert said. “Everything. It doesn’t matter. Take your pants off.”

Justios complied. His erection lay stiff and dark with blood against his paunch. The pubic thatch was dark, almost black, and Robert wondered whether this Lower District tough lightened his hair.

It had been one of his grandfather’s stable hands who first instructed Robert in the fine art of oral sex, and sucking was forever linked in Robert’s mind to the earthy smell of horses and leather. Now, as he fell to his knees between Justios’s legs and took the man’s cockhead into his mouth, his olfactory glands twitched in remembrance.

“Ah, fuck,” Justios hissed, thrusting his hips forward to bury himself deeper.

“That’s the idea,” Robert said, or would have had his mouth not been full of penis. As it was the words just came out as garbled mumbles, but Justios seemed to think this was some new trend in blowjobs and appreciate the sensation because he groaned loudly in pleasure.

“I’m pretending you’re someone else,” Robert told Justios around his cock.

“’S good,” Justios panted, and Robert gave up. He made an angry hollow-cheeked suck, deliberately scraping his teeth against the sensitive shaft, but Justios only groaned louder.

_I’m pretending you’re someone else_ , Robert continued in his head, trying to mentally telegram the thoughts to Justios.  _I’m hoping you’ll turn into him soon so I can stop hating myself for sucking a trick in a tavern while he’s being fucked in the brothel that owns him._

Assuming it had been Luca in the brothel at all. If it wasn’t just a boy who looked like him, or just enough like him to fool Robert’s drunk, desperate mind. Robert was beginning to suspect that it had all just been a sadistic sort of dream. Or perhaps he really was going mad.

Justios did not hear Robert’s thoughts and did not turn into Luca. Instead he twined his fingers in Robert’s hair, trying to push his head down. Robert reached up and slapped his hand away irritably. He thought of removing the cock so he could scold its owner for his bad manners but found himself reluctant to do so. There was something soothing in this, meditative even. Cathartic. Luca had once—

No. He wouldn’t think of Luca. He wouldn’t even think of this oaf. He would think of nothing but the cock in his mouth. He closed his eyes and willed his mind blank. Instead he focused on tactile sensations: the slide of thick silky flesh against his tongue, the bursts of brackish flavour leaking from its tip, the feel of heavy balls nudging against his chin with every downstroke. Gods, this was good. He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed it. He fell quickly into the old familiar rhythm Adrian had preferred, fondling Justios’s testicles with one hand and his own half-hard cock through the fabric of his trousers with the other. He let every coherent thought go completely and lost himself in the bob of his head, the throbbing of the man’s cock, and the mounting fuzzyheadedness of twin arousal and intoxication.

Robert came before Justios, stamina seriously decreased by drunkenness. He made a mess of his trousers and even through the after-orgasm euphoria (also, he noted, seriously decreased by drunkenness) winced to think of the laundry-girl's expression when he handed her his cum-stained clothes in the morning. Having milked all the pleasure he could out of sucking Justios Robert took him in hand, pumping the man to his own orgasm with an impatience he knew to be selfish but refused to feel guilty for. Justios bucked, yelled, and came. Robert wiped his hand on the leg of his trousers unthinkingly, then groaned when he realized that he now not only had his own fluids soiling his best dress-pants, he also had a complete stranger's.

Ignoring Justios, who was fumbling with his pant-laces and looking at Robert questioningly, no doubt wondering if a mediocre blowjob was all he was going to get tonight, Robert crawled onto the bed and buried his head in a musty pillow. He fell at once into a deep sleep and did not dream.

 

Robert woke with the taste of cock in his mouth.

This certainly wasn’t the first time this had happened, but it was the first time that Robert couldn’t remember whose cock he’d been sucking. Even at his most addled he at least made a cursory note of the man whose prick was about to breach his lips. Fuck, but he must’ve been drunk last night. Or was it still tonight? Gods, what  _time_ was it?

Robert rolled off of his stomach onto his back, wincing as the movement sent lancing spikes of pain through his head, and opened one eye experimentally. He was sprawled on a rough-hewn cot in what looked to be a tavern room-for-let, tangled in ill-washed sheets with an abominably low thread count and still wearing last night’s clothes, stained and stinking of ale and cum. He had a vague notion that he’d done something in them worth regretting, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what.

Robert groaned and pulled the sheets over his head. Damn his life and everything to hell, he needed another five solid hours of sleep before he could deal with this.

“Uh, m’lord?” came a tentative voice.

Robert peered blearily over the edge of the sheets, resolving to hate unreservedly whoever was standing there. A square-jawed tough, the sort of rough type his friend Val made a bad habit of, was standing in the doorway, shuffling his feet and looking concerned. Robert made a mental inventory of the likely picture he painted and decided that the concern probably wasn’t unwarranted.

“Never fear, whoever you are, I shall avoid dying of alcohol poisoning in your tavern,” Robert assured him, dragging the sheets over his face again. “Bring us up a pot of your strongest black coffee, there’s a good chap, and I do mean strong. If it doesn’t boil the enamel off my teeth it isn’t strong enough. Bloody  _fuck_ , why is everything so  _fucking_ bright?”

There was an offended pause, and the tough said tersely, “My name is Justios.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to— _oh_.” Robert sat up, horrified. “Did we, ah—”

“ _Yes!_ ”

“Oh.” Robert pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. Fuck.  _Fuck_. He opened them again and looked at the tough, who was pink with indignation. “Did I – er—“

“You gave me a blowjob, came in your pants, and finished me off with your hand,  _my lord_ ,” Justios snapped, looking furious.

Thus the taste in his mouth and unmistakable crust of dried semen in his underclothes. Lovely. Robert scrubbed at his face with his hands and groaned again.

“I suppose it’s too much to hope for that you have any idea how I spent the earlier half of my evening?” he said, trying to coalesce vague fragments of memory into something cohesive and failing.

“No,” Justios ground out, “although apparently you mentioned something to my father about a brothel.”

Robert blinked. That was strange. He hated brothels. They reminded him too much of Luca— _oh_.

Oh,  _fuck_.


	8. Chapter 8

 

It was not easy to find a cab in Paradiso at ten o’clock the morning after Bacchanal. No doubt the drivers were worried about running over the various merrymakers who had passed out in the street, tangled together in twos and fours, their masks askew and underthings in disarray; some had managed to drag themselves onto the sidewalk but not any further than that. Robert passed a man he recognized from College snoring soundly on the front stoop of a brothel, no doubt after being ejected once it was realized he hadn’t the money to cover his bill. Another time Robert would have peeled him off the steps and bundled him into a cab bound for College Square. Now, however, he was wholly occupied with the single purpose of getting back to the Harlequin as fast as humanly possible. He did spare a moment to spread his cloak over his sleeping classmate and tuck a few copper pieces into his vest pocket. At least the idiot would be able to get home once he had recovered from what was sure to be a monstrous hangover.

Robert caught sight of a cab coming towards him. He hailed it with one hand, digging through his pockets for the fare with the other. The carriage pulled up alongside and the door sprang open.

“The Harlequin, in all haste,” Robert ordered the cabbie. “There’ll be a silver bit for you if you can get me there faster than the crow flies.”

The cabbie grinned, showing a wide gap between his rotting front teeth. “We’ll get there in time, m’lord.”

What an odd thing to say, Robert thought, climbing inside. The moment the door was shut the carriage sprang forward. Robert lost his balance and was forced to sit rather abruptly upon the moth-eaten bench.

“Good morning.”

Robert nearly fell over. Across from him sat a man shrouded in a threadbare scholar’s robe. With his long spindly limbs folded at angles and the hacking cough that rattled hollowly in his chest, the man reminded Robert of nothing so much as a praying mantis in repose.

“Oh, bloody hell, not you,” Robert groaned.

Unperturbed, the man blew his nose into a graying handkerchief. “Where are my pages, Robert?”

“Get Val to do it this week.”

“Monsieur Fourteys is busy with another assignment,” the man informed him, withdrawing the handkerchief into the depths of his cloak. “He can’t be spared.”

“What, and I can?” cried Robert indignantly. “I’ve duties at Court, and as if that weren’t enough I’m knee-deep in end-of-term studies. As you well know,” he added pointedly.

“And yet you have enough time to go cavorting in the Lower District with your disreputable cousin,” the man noted, fixing Robert with a watery blue eye.

“How did you—? Oh, never mind.” Robert huffed crossly. “I suppose I should resign myself to being followed by subversive elements.”

The man shrugged. “Only the ones to whom you are employed.”

It was all that was needed to push Robert from irritated to severely annoyed.

“Employed?” he drawled. “What do you take me for, some tradesman with mud on his trousers? Please, sir. If you must assign me to some low station, at least call me a mercenary. King Eustace, the Exile, it’s all one to me. I only joined your silly Philosophy Club as a favor to Val, and being your quill-for-hire grows more tiresome by the day.”

Robert regretted the words as soon as he’d spoken them, but he’d committed himself to being a bastard now. He met the man’s outraged glare with the blank, polite, and very slightly sarcastic expression he usually saved for the marriageable girls at Court.

The man’s thin, dry lips convulsed into a tight line. “I know that you enjoy playing the bright young ne’er-do-well, Robert,” he said coldly, “but I grow concerned that you act the part too well.”

Robert laughed, a short, sharp bark. “I’m afraid I don’t have time for a critique of my character.”

Ignoring the man’s alarmed protest, Robert grabbed the handle of the carriage door and wrenched it open. They were going very fast; the cobbles were a blur beneath the wheels.

“Tell him to stop the carriage,” Robert shouted over the noise of the horse’s clattering hooves.

The man said something – it might have been damn you – before yanking open his window and shouting to the driver.

Robert jumped out before the carriage had come to a complete halt. His boot caught on the curb and he would have gone sprawling if he hadn’t caught a lamp-post and righted himself.

The man leaned out of the carriage door, shouting between coughs, “I want that paper on the history of rationalism by tomorrow!”

“You gave me an extension until Friday!”

“And now I know how you’re spending the extra time, I’m rescinding it!”

Robert laughed, a true laugh this time. “Fuck you too, professor!” he howled after the carriage, but it had turned the corner by then, and he would never be sure whether Professor Gregory heard him or not.

 

Jumping from a moving carriage may have been a fine bit of theater, but it had landed Robert on the outskirts of Paradiso. He could see the cragged shoulder of Hornfluer Wharf shadowing narrow avenues of tenements and bunkhouses. Groaning, he scrubbed his hand across his eyes. Fuck. He was even further from the Harlequin than when he’d started.

Fortunately Robert knew Paradiso almost as well as College Square. By keeping his eye on the distant spire of the Consecration, the highest point in Lyonesse, and following the main boulevard, he was able to make his way back to Paradiso’s center without getting mugged, lost, or pushed into the harbor.

Once there, another problem presented itself: he had been far too absorbed in groping Adrian’s ass to pay any attention to what the Harlequin looked like. Robert wandered around feeling cross and stupid until, quite by coincidence, he found himself standing in front of a high walled courtyard that he distinctly remembered urinating against at some point during the evening. After that he suddenly recalled an iron gate that he had stumbled through while chasing after the youth in the cat-mask. The iron gate led him to the doorway where he had mouthed Adrian’s cock through his trousers. Then Francis had appeared, and – yes – dragged them to this tavern, where the landlord was morosely scrubbing vomit from his stoop. Robert prudently kept out of his sight.

From there it was easy enough to retrace the path from tavern through littered streets, past a statue of a long-dead Minister of Finance whose unfortunately positioned hand had been pressed into obscene service the night before, down a narrow lane where sewage clogged with confetti ran between the cobblestones, and finally onto a broad seedy avenue where a palazzo faced in pink marble reared from the filth, its banner patterned a black-and-white harlequin.

Robert picked his way across the street, sidestepping the smashed remains of a sedan chair. The Harlequin’s broad, gold-painted front doors had looked much more impressive the night before. In the wan morning light Robert could see that the paint was peeling away to reveal cheap carved pine beneath. More flakes fell as he rapped on the door. The sound was oddly muffled. Was the door barred? Looking up, Robert noticed that the windows were barred as well.

More aggressive knocking evinced no response from within. Undaunted, Robert determined to locate the tradesman’s entrance. He sidled around the Harlequin’s pink flank, noting as he did the cracks in the eggshell-thin marble, the creeping ivy snaking under. The tradesman’s entrance let out into a dank alley where the brothel chamber-pots were emptied. Robert held his sleeve to his nose and navigated carefully around the reeking waste.

There was no gilt on the tradesman’s door. Robert knocked with one hand, fumbling through his pocket for a posey with the other. He heard the measured footsteps of someone taking their time, then the scrape of bolts being pulled back and clank of a key in a lock. The door was pulled open to reveal a sleep-tousled tough wearing a nightshirt and a surly expression.

“You aren’t the baker,” said the tough accusingly.

Robert blinked. “Did I claim to be the baker?”

“So you’re not the baker?” said the tough.

“I have never been a baker in my life,” Robert replied, patience wearing thread-thin. “I am the sovereign heir to the house of d’Argent, and I demand audience with the proprietor of this establishment immediately.”

This was greeted with an ungracious snort. “Before noon? That’s likely. Anyway,” the tough went on, narrowing his eyes, “how do I know you’re not the baker? You don’t look like a lord to me.”

“Oh, do I not?” Robert said heatedly. “And what, pray, does a lord look like?”

“Well, lords wear masks on Bacchanal, for one thing,” the tough pointed out. “And they don’t have ink on their sleeves.

Robert went involuntarily to tuck his sleeves into his jacket before remembering that he was a prince of the blood and was not to be made to feel unkempt by a man in a nightshirt. Instead he straightened, smoothed back his hair, and reached into his vest. He pulled out a long chain. Hanging from it was a silver disc stamped with the image of a crowned griffin carrying a beakful of arrows. The griffin’s eye was a single teardrop ruby.

The tough looked as though he would have dearly loved to bite the regalia to see if it was real gold. Instead he sank clumsily to one knee, muttering something that could have been either an obeisance or an obscenity.

“Oh, get up,” said Robert irritably, tucking the regalia back into his shirt. “Look, I need to see your master right away. It really is a matter of the very greatest importance.”

The tough lumbered to his feet, looking rumpled and sour. “Follow me,” he said. “My lord.”

The tough led Robert down a narrow, high-ceilinged passageway that smelled of cheap candles and up a short flight of stairs to what Robert recognized from his time as a boot-boy as the butler’s quarters. The tough pounded on the door with a closed fist, causing a mild rain of plaster from the walls. A few moments later it creaked open.

“What is it now, Sark?” came an irate voice from behind the door. “If the baker’s late again, it isn’t my—”

“Have a visitor,” the tough barreled over him. “Lord d’Argent. Got regalia and everything. I checked. Wants to see the big man. Thought I’d better bring him to you.”

The door was flung open and a eunuch in an embroidered peignoir sprang out. He took one look at Robert and fell to his knees, knocking his forehead against the floor.

“Er…you may rise,” Robert said, trying to remember the customary phrasing and probably getting it wrong.

The eunuch rose in any case, keeping a palm pressed to his brow. “My most gracious and munificent lord,” he gasped, “if I may be so bold as to speak in your presence—” Robert gave him an affirming nod, and the eunuch continued, “I would venture to humbly request my lord allow himself to be taken to a location more suitable for his exalted status while this guard—” here he shot the tough a look of venom—“awakens my noble master."

The tough opened his mouth to protest, then snapped it shut, scowling. He made heavy weather of stomping off while the bowing eunuch showed Robert along a dank passageway, up a flight of rickety stairs, through much nicer, newer passageways, up a spiral staircase in pink marble that made Robert’s head ache, and through a magnificent set of latticed double doors which opened into a sumptuously decorated parlor. There Robert was enjoined to sit on a thronelike red chair and have a tuffet shoved under his feet. Robert was still sore from the carriage ride and might have insisted on standing had not the abortive, anxious fluttering gestures the eunuch was making not dredged up another memory from last night. He could remember all too well those long elegant fingers stroking a reluctant erection from him. Red-faced and weak with embarrassment, he collapsed onto the chair with an undignified thump.

The eunuch bowed himself out, begging my lord’s patience and promising to send a boy with nectar and hors d'œuvres.  
  
“Coffee,” said Robert plaintively.

He scarcely had time to get comfortable before the doors were thrown open again and a hugely fat man sailed in. There was so much of him that Robert could not take in all of him at once. He had to allow his eyes to adjust in stages, first registering the purple slippers with their turned-up toes, then travelling up to the man’s broad benevolent face, trimmed with a greasy black beard and split in an ingratiating grin. He wore an elaborate silver wig, its stiff curls like wood shavings. His dressing gown was of a violently orange iridescent taffeta that made Robert’s head hurt, trimmed with brass cones which jangled horribly.

“Your grace!” the man breathed, clapping chubby hands together and bowing as low as his stomach allowed. His tones were clipped, cultured, with hint of Irjivi in the rolling vowels. “It is an honor, my lord, an honor. We are not worthy.” He shuffled towards Robert, bowing extravagantly. When he was close enough, pounced forward and grabbed Robert’s hand, which he proceeded to kiss wetly and at length.

“Er, indeed,” said Robert, managing to disentangle himself from the man’s fleshy grasp. “I suppose you are the, er – proprietor?”

“Gregori Boq, at your service, my lord,” said the man, gusting sherry fumes into Robert’s face. “I humble myself before you.”

“Fine, fine. Now, there is an urgent matter—”

He was interrupted by the arrival of a boy carrying a breakfast tray. The boy was half-asleep and tried to offer Robert the plate and curtsy at the same time, with the result that he nearly tipped a platter of eggs and cold salmon into Robert’s lap. The look Gregori Boq shot him made Robert’s blood run cold. His fat, kindly face went hard and cold and full of frigid malice, and his fingers twitched convulsively. The boy turned white, bobbed a curtsy and stammered a near-voiceless apology, stumbling backward from the room.

Gregori Boq turned to Robert, all smooth sycophancy once again. “I apologize for our but meager offerings, my lord. Had we been expecting a guest of my lord’s stature, proper victuals would of course have been arranged.”

Looking down at the thick slices of ginger-seasoned salmon and golden aureole of peppered eggs, Robert could hardly remember a meal so abundant and welcome. He usually dined at College, where the food was the sort of gray stodgy stuff eaten only by prisoners or scholars, or with Grandfather, who believed zealously in bran. Still, eyeing Boq’s girth, Robert could imagine that the man’s palate was rather more demanding than his own. Before he had even picked up his knife and fork, however, the doors were flung open once more, this time to receive an array of yawning boys draped in garish jewelry.

“Ah, wonderful!” said Boq, clapping his hands. “An appetizer.”

One of the boys was carrying a flute; he began to play a high, tootling tune that made Robert’s teeth ache. The other boys began to dance in the slow, undulating way that brothel boys did, with much pouting and suggestive bum-waggling. Robert was far too hung-over to appreciate it.

“Look,” he said, having to speak loudly over the damn flute, “this is all very – hospitable – but I really do have urgent business I must speak with you about.”

Gregori Boq seemed to droop all over. He snapped his fingers at the boys, who stopped dancing and instead struck seductive poses.

“Can I not perhaps persuade my most eminent lord to sample some of the House’s other offerings?” he said hopefully. “I can assure my lord that whatever fault he found with last night’s Ganymene shall be swiftly remedied by their attentions.”

Robert, about to say something else entirely, shut his mouth with a snap. “What are you talking about?”

“No, no, of course my lord is correct,” Boq amended hastily. “The great insult to my lord’s honor cannot be amended by another boy. How about five boys?”

“I don’t—”

“Ten?” Boq seemed to be growing truly desperate. “Ten boys of my lord’s choosing, his for the evening?”

“No amount of boys—”

“No, of course not.” Boq drooped further, like a wilting hothouse flower. “The insult must have been grave indeed. I can but offer my lord the most sincere of apologies, and assure him that the offender will be dealt with most harshly—”

“What?”

“—unless of course my lord wishes to punish the boy himself—”

“No!” Robert said this more forcefully than he intended. Boq’s pouchy eyes bulged. The posing boys took a step back, looking alarmed. Robert took a deep breath and forced his voice to calm. “No, that will not be necessary. There is no reason to punish – to punish the boy. I was pleased with his service. Extremely pleased. In fact, I wish to see him again. Immediately.”


	9. Chapter 9

 

*

_In the dream Luca flies like a bird over the mountains. Below there is a figure, running. He is naked. His face is red and his hands and feet are blue. There are men chasing him. The men have dogs. Luca can hear them baying in the not-far distance. He thinks of red muzzles, of red on the white snow. The running man can hear them as well. His legs fail him. He falls. Luca wheels closer, thinking he can help the man, help him escape from the dogs. The man looks up. His face is red with blood. He is Alek. He is Luca’s brother. Alek sees Luca and he screams._

*

Luca awoke to someone shaking him. For a moment upon opening his eyes all he could see was the blinding whiteness of snow. Then Bagoas loomed over him, face pinched with panic.

“Wake up!” he hissed, clutching at Luca’s already-bruised arm. “The lord is back. He wants to see you.”

“The lord?” said Luca groggily. “What—”

“ _Melchior!_ ”

Luca was on his feet before he had time to think. Ah,  _Lady_ , he’d forgotten the drubbing his body had taken last night. He was obliged to clutch at the wall for support. Fuck, even his teeth hurt. He felt like one great bruise.

“Damned boy!” said Bagoas, near-hysterical. “Blessings upon us, can you not even  _stand?_ ”

“He can,” came Sark’s voice from the corner. He was still in his nightshirt, customary cig clamped between his teeth, and despite his even tone his eyes were red and crumpled with temper.

Luca straightened immediately, sucking in his breath at the lancing ache in his side. “I’m fine, I’m ready—how long has the lord been waiting?”

“Too long.” Bagoas ran a critical eye over Luca,  _tchi_ ng disapprovingly at his swollen lip, the dark circles beneath his eyes. “And he’ll be waiting longer still. We can’t let him see you looking like this.”

“Be enough to drive him to cunt,” Sark put in helpfully from around his cig.

  
The next twenty minutes were a blur of activity. Luca was directed to sit, stand, and bend over while Bagoas and an extremely irritated Asher applied careful maquillage to his bruises, painted his eyes and lips, wove his hair into a crown of braids, and prepared his horribly sore anus for the lord’s ministrations. Luca muffled gasping moans into his sleeve as the consolateur breached him, vision going vague around the edges. After maneuvering his still-limp body into a transparent robe, Bagoas slipped a hinged ring onto Luca’s finger. Luca knew without having to ask that it contained smelling salts. If the lord fucked him to the point of fainting, he was to discreetly open the ring. It wouldn’t do for him pass out under a patron.

All the while, Bagoas was speaking, his voice fading in and out for Luca in shrill, excited swoops. “...redemption is at hand...can still become first whore if...not to be importunate, but listen carefully to what he...Master most interested...prove yourself...listening? Luca, are you  _listening_ at all?”  


Luca snapped back to the present. “I’ll redeem myself if I please the lord and tell the master everything he says,” he parroted obediently.  


“Clever boy.” Bagoas adjusted a bangle to hide the finger-marks on Luca’s upper arm. “Please do try not to give his lordship the impression that you are completely ignoring him. I doubt he will find it charming.”

“Yes, Bagoas.”

“Hm.” Bagoas cast a critical eye over Luca’s body and sighed. “It will have to do.” He turned to Sark, who was waiting in the doorway. “Tell the master that the Golden Bird is ready.”

Sark made a mocking bow. “And where should I direct His Nibs?”

Bagoas pursed his lips consideringly, then replied, “High Parlor.”

Luca’s eyes widened. High Parlor – that was where Bridda had recieved patrons. Luca had only been there once, when he was a page; Carr had been first whore then. A patron had blacked out drunk on the floor and pissed himself. Luca had been sent to clean. And now--he suppressed a laugh. Well, hopefully he wouldn’t be mopping up after another drunk lord today.

 

High Parlor was at the top of the House, up a winding staircase with many low, broad stairs. Luca took them three at a time. The stairs led to a landing arrayed as a waiting room, with a couch and fat tuffett beside a table upon which sat a tray of assorted sweetmeats and a crystal bottle of some dark liquer. A silk ribbon hung beside the Parlor door; when pulled a bell within would ring, letting Luca know when he had a patron. Inside there would be an identical device which he would use to let the patron know that he was ready.

Luca pulled the ribbon and listened for the muffled chime. Then, slowly, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

His first impression was one of overwhelming blue. The walls were upholstered with blue velvet panels, the same deep marine of the furniture and bedcoverings – Bridda’s color, Luca remembered. The room had been red in Carr’s day. Everything would no doubt be changed out for gold now. 

Luca shut the door carefully behind him and walked slowly around the room. High Parlor was even larger than he remembered, almost as spacious as Master Boq’s parlor, and perfectly round. Painted freizes wheeled on the high domed ceiling, cherubs gamboling through spun-sugar clouds in pink and white. Whichever way Luca turned he caught glimpses of himself in many mirrors, set like eyes amidst the gauzy drapes. It was unsettling. He raised a hand self-consciously to his face – how pale he was! Did he look old? – then frowned, seeing that his reflection did not carry over to one pane of glass half-hidden beneath a panel. Odd. When he went to examine closer he found that he had lost sight of the pane; he had to back up, turning his head, before he caught it again. He walked towards it, keeping it in the corner of his eye. When he reached the wall he raised his hand, fingers finding smooth glass beneath the seam of the panel. He pulled a little and the panel gave way to reveal --

A window. Luca shut his eyes tight and opened them again. It was still there. There was a narrow window in the wall, a hand’s span across and as high as Luca was tall. The glass was warped and spiderwebbed, obscured by streaks of filth and creeping ivy, but when Luca pressed his face against it he could see the sky.

Five years. It had been five years since he had seen the sky.

Luca would have stayed there for hours, days even, nose to the glass as he took great gulps of the sweet cold air that came through the cracks, but the chime of the bell jolted him from his trance. He jumped, guiltily. Quickly he pulled the panel back over the window and folded the drapes to cover it completely. Then he ran to the bed and arranged himself, kneeling with his robe open just enough to let his nipples crest over the neck. He checked his reflection in the nearest mirror and grimaced. He  _did_  look old. Tired and old. Never mind. Perhaps the lord would still be too drunk to notice.  


Luca pulled the ribbon beside the bed and heard the answering chime outside. Then the door opened and the lord stepped inside.

He was wearing the same clothes from last night. They were crumpled and stank faintly. He was sallow with hangover, hair limp, the ruins of a lord’s knot tangled above his ear. Last night he had been almost handsome; now he was nearly ugly. Luca could still feel the lord’s mouth, his tongue, the weight of his hands. He clenched his knees together and refused to acknowledge the rush of heat to his chest. 

Instead he licked his lips and tried to give his schooled smile. When he spoke, it was hardly above a whisper. “Welcome to the Harlequin, my lord. How may this slave serve your pleasure?”

The lord ran a hand through his hair and barked a laugh that sounded half-mad. 

“It is you, isn’t it?” His voice was rough, wondering. “I didn’t think I could be wrong. Not about you.”

Luca felt a twinge of unease. Was this some sort of roleplay he didn’t understand?

“I can be whoever my lord wishes me to be,” Luca said carefully. “If my lord cares to inform me of his preferences, I can – “

The lord moved his hand in a quick sharp gesture. “Don’t,” he said abruptly. “Don’t talk like that. Please.”

Unease was quickly becoming outright panic. Whatever Luca had done it had been wrong. He slipped to the floor and prostrated himself, hoping this would placate the lord.

It didn’t. If anything, it made him more agitated. He gave a great groan of distress and began to pace, filthy boots moving back and forth in Luca’s limited field of vision. Finally he stopped.

“Please,” he said, “look at me.”

Obediently, Luca rose to kneel.

“ _Look_ at me,” the lord repeated. He dropped down to kneel in front of Luca. Before Luca had time to register how inappropriate this was – a prince of the blood on the same level as a slave, as though they were equals – the lord grasped his chin and tilted it up. Unwillingly, expecting to be hit any moment for his impudence, Luca raised his eyes.

The lord was staring at him with such searching intensity that Luca almost dropped his gaze again. “Do you not know me?” he said.

“I would know my lord however he wishes himself to be known,” Luca stammered.

The lord shook his head angrily. “No, don’t answer me like that. Do you  _know_ me?”

“My lord was Melchior,” Luca said helplessly.

The lord gave a wordless howl of despair and reeled away, clutching his head in his hands. Luca was too afraid to move. He wrapped his arms around himself and cowered, terrified that he was going to be attacked any second by this madman.

There was a long silence during which the lord rubbed his temples and Luca tried to shrink into as small a target as physically possible. When the lord looked up, his face was tight with agony. He came towards Luca half-crouched, as though approaching a cornered animal.

“Listen,” he said, voice cracking and uneven. “Listen to me. Please.” He took a breath. “You knew a boy once, a long time ago. He – “ Laughter, shuddering close to tears. “He loved you. Do you remember?”

Luca opened his mouth. Closed it again. Did he speak? He couldn’t know. 

“Luca.” The lord was almost crying. “Luca, I’m so sorry.”

The world went slow. For a blink of time that stretched into endlessness Luca was back at the Laughing Rooster. He could see the dim outline of a door from where the men had him down, from where he was being hurt, and he could see the door, and he could see the door, and Robbie was going to come through the door, and the men would stop, and Robbie would come, and he would take Luca away, away from the men, and Robbie was coming, he was, he  _was_ \--

And then Luca was on the floor of another brothel years later, and Robbie had come, and Robbie was here, and all Luca could think to say was, “Your nose used to be crooked.”

Robbie was silent for a moment. Then his face split into the widest, truest smile Luca had ever seen, and he laughed a great, deep laugh that seemed to echo from the very fathoms of him. Luca tried to laugh, too, but it went wrong somewhere and came out as a sob. Then he was doubled over, sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. 

Robbie pulled him into his arms, murmuring “Sh, sh.” Luca tried to speak, but he could only say “Please”. He sobbed “please” after “please” into Robbie’s chest, ashamed, distantly, at the blubbering mess he must seem. Robbie held him, made soothing noises and stroked his hair. His hands were so gentle. The way he held Luca, as though he might break. Finally the sobs subsided, leaving Luca feeling weak and sticky and ashamed.

“I ruined your shirt,” he said stupidly.

Robbie smiled again, making Luca feel weaker and stickier and more ashamed than ever. “I have others.”

Luca nodded, bit his lip. “Are you really a lord?”

“Yes, for my sins.” Robbie fingered Luca’s braid. “Your hair – you’ve grown it long.”

“Your nose,” Luca reminded him.

Robbie laughed and pulled a face that reminded Luca so achingly of five years ago he nearly began to cry again. “My grandfather had it fixed. Dreadfully boring, isn’t it? No character whatsoever. And I used to have such a noble profile.”

Luca giggled. “You still do.”

“Rather literally now, I’m afraid,” Robbie said ruefully. He touched Luca’s cheek with his fingertips, light as a kiss. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“You didn’t come.” It burst out of Luca like something alive. “I thought – I was so sure you’d come.”

He regretted it as soon as he’d said it. Robbie’s eyes clouded over; his hand fell from Luca’s hair. Luca panicked. He’d made Robbie angry. Robbie was going to leave again. In his mind’s eye the empty doorway loomed wide and dark.

“Please. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please don’t go. Please. Please.”

Luca was babbling. He knew he was babbling but he couldn’t stop himself. Nor could he stop himself from taking Robbie’s hand and pressing it urgently to his mouth, his chest, lower, desperate, offering himself. Robbie wrenched away and Luca squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the blow to fall. Hoping it would, because maybe if Robbie beat him he could forgive him after.

But the blow never came. Instead Luca felt Robbie’s hand on his hair again. Luca opened his eyes. Robbie was looking at him, and Robbie was crying.

“I promised that I’d find you,” Robbie said softly. “Remember? I swore that no matter where he took you, I’d come after you.” He looked away, jaw clenched. “But I didn’t. Did I? I never thought – how you must have waited. Waited for me. And I never came.”

“But you did,” Luca insisted. “You’re here now.”

“Almost six years too late.” He drew a ragged breath. “Luca, I thought you were dead.”

“ _What?_ ”

“After Lord Frederick came back,” Robbie said. “He said he’d killed you himself. Told me he’d strangled you and thrown your body in the river.”

Luca shook his head. “No. He – he tried, I think – he put his hands around my throat, but I – begged – ” He broke off, words sticking in his throat. Gods, how he’d begged. Blubbering, hysterical, half-incoherent, snivelling  _please_ and  _master_ and  _I love you_. That had always been what Master Frederick wanted to hear, what he asked for when he was thrusting into Luca.  _Say that you love me, doll._ As if saying it could make it true.

“Where did he take you?”

“Paradiso. “ Luca looked down. “There was a man there – I don’t know how Master Frederick knew him. He was – he – he did – things --“ Luca shook his head again, spasmodically, as though trying to shake something lose. “Master Frederick said he’d come back for me. After I’d learned how lucky I was, he said. For his mercy. But he never came back.”

“There was a fever,” Robbie said. “It killed most of the household. He went first.”

“Oh.” Luca stared at his hands. “I thought he’d forgotten about me. I thought you – “

“I hadn’t,” Robbie said hoassly. “I couldn’t. You were dead. I thought it was my fault.” He laughed, harsh and without humor. “I tried to hang myself, you know. A rather pathetic suicide attempt, all things considered. I hadn’t even tied the noose right. I ended up falling off the beam and broke my wrist. Not exactly the romantic end I had in mind.”

“Oh,” Luca said again in a small voice. “I’m glad. Not that you tried to kill yourself,” he hastened to add. “Glad it didn’t work.”

The corners of Robbie’s mouth quirked. “So am I, most days.”

Luca hesitated. “Your wife,” he said carefully. “She must be glad as well.”

Robbie reeled back. “ _Wife_?” he sputtered. “What the devil are you talking about? I’d sooner marry a goat.”

“But – how else – “

“Ah, I see. I’m neglecting vital details of my rise to the aristocracy.” 

Robbie sighed, raking his fingers through his hair. Luca got the distinct sense that he would rather not talk about it at all.

“Well,” Robbie began, “you remember I told you that my mother was always going on about how my father was someone important? It turns out she was telling the truth for once in her silly little life. Dear Papa was the heir to the House of d’Argent. After Lord Frederick turned us out Gran went to see my father—only he had just died, you see. He’d never married and had no legitimate heir, so Grandfather d’Argent decided to take me instead. Made up some story about my father having had a secret marriage to an exiled Tyrmanian princess, got the documents forged and everything. He hired tutors for me – a bloody stable of tutors, each one more irritating than the last. Dance, deportment, languages. You may think being a noble is all swanning about at balls and spending prodigious amounts of money on imported fruit, but that’s just the show we all put on for the rabble. Underneath the silk and the perfume and the – the  _affectation,_  we’re as venal and corrupt as the crookedest street-thief in Lyonesse. Hypocrisy is what it is, rank hypocrisy – “

Robbie finally seemed to notice the way Luca was staring at him. He gave an embarrassed cough. “Sorry. Got a bit carried away there.”

“You sounded like your Gran,” Luca said. “She was always going on about the nobles.”

Robbie grinned. “I shall take that as a compliment. My populist rage shall be a testament to her memory.”

“Her memory?” Luca said. “Is she – “

“The fever.” Robbie’s tone was even but his face had acquired a taut, strained look. “I didn’t know she was sick. She must have had it for days without telling me. The day after Grandfather adopted me she just – slipped away in the night.”

Luca knew that there were things people ought to say in these sort of situations, clever comforting things that would make everything somehow all right. But all he could think of was, “I’m so sorry, Robbie.”

Robbie looked startled. “Gods. Nobody’s called me that in ages. I go by Robert now.”

“Robert,” Luca said, trying it out. “Lord Robert d’Argent.”

“Robert Barnaby Alphonse Gustave d’Argent, Prince du Sang and Exalted Lord of the Realm,” Robbie –  _Robert –_ corrected. “Isn’t it awful?”

Luca giggled. “Certainly a lot more complicated than Robbie Carpenter.”

Robert’s face softened. “Well. Perhaps I’ll still be Robbie on special occasions.”

Luca wasn’t sure what changed, then, but there was a subtle shift in the air, in their bodies. He flushed suddenly, dropped his eyes. He was suddenly acutely aware of how close he was to Robert. Could he hear how quick Luca’s breath came?

Tentatively, Robert traced the line of Luca’s chin with his thumb. When he spoke his voice was soft, reverent. “You’re beautiful.”

Luca was so warm and dazed he felt feverish. He licked his lips. “Not – not too old?”

“Perfect.”

And then Robert’s hands were cupping his face, and Robert’s lips were on his lips, and Luca found himself curiously unable to form a coherent thought for quite some time.

 


	10. Chapter 10

 

Robert wasn’t sure how long the kiss lasted. Possibly the world had ended somewhere in the middle. When they finally parted Robert felt as though he’d swallowed the sun. It pulsed hot and alive in his breast and suffused him with a warmth sweeter than any wine. Luca was flushed from his cheeks to his chest. His lips were still parted, swollen —

— bloody. There was blood on his lip.

“Fuck.” Robert touched the corner of Luca’s mouth. “Did I—”

“No,” Luca said, too quickly. “It was – it wasn’t you.”

Robert’s fingers came away smeared with maquillage, revealing livid bruises across Luca’s cheekbone, under his brow.

“And your eye. “Robert forced his voice stay even. “Who blacked your eye?”

Luca’s hand flew to his face. “It’s nothing.”

“It isn’t nothing.” Robert turned Luca’s arm — so thin; his fingers met around it — to see the finger-marks on his shoulders, braceleting his wrist. “Look at this. And this. There are bruises all over you.” Rage rose in his throat like bile. “It was that monster on stage last night, wasn’t it? Gods, I should have — ”

“Please! It – it doesn’t matter. Here — “

Luca touched Robert’s cheek, smiling as he had when Robert had first entered. A pretty, artificial smile. He must apply it for the patrons as carefully as he did his makeup. There was no truth in it. Robert pulled away.

Luca’s smile faltered. He dropped his hand, curled it into his lap and plucked fitfully at the hem of his robe.

Robert felt like a beast. “Fuck, I’m an idiot.” He brought Luca’s palm to his mouth in apology. “I just – I can’t stand seeing you hurt.”

“I’m sorry.” Luca’s voice was so small it was barely audible.

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

Luca shook his head distractedly. “I won’t look like this when you next come to see me. I’ll be clean. I — ”

Robert shushed him by kissing his palm again. “Don’t be silly.”

“I’m a mess,” Luca whispered, and Robert knew he wasn’t just talking about the bruises.

“Luca, look at me,” Robert said. “I’m wearing the clothes I slept in. I must stink like a distillery.”

A grin tugged at the torn corner of Luca’s mouth. “Well. Perhaps a very small distillery.”

“A small, handsome distillery?”

“Oh yes,” Luca said, smile blooming across his face. “Positively dashing.”

Robert couldn’t keep himself from kissing Luca’s mouth again – carefully, wincing at the faint taste of copper. Luca was so soft against him, warm and yielding. He made a sweet little sigh, fingers tightening around Robert’s arms. The feel of him, the smell – his body was at once foreign and as familiar as Robert’s own.

“I can’t believe you thought I had a wife,” Robert murmured into the curve of Luca’s neck. He could feel Luca’s laugh against his cheek.

“Did no-one tell you?” Luca said in mock seriousness. “Nobles always have wives. I think it’s a rule.”

“Yes, so my grandfather has informed me.” Robert nuzzled his way down to Luca’s collarbone. “An altogether foolish business, marriage. I plan to delay it as long as possible, preferably to the grave.”

Luca laughed again, ending in a gasp as Robert licked a slow, wet trail to the outer curve of his chest. He shivered, nipples tightening. There was a dried crescent of blood around the nub, dark not from arousal but from purpling bruises.

Robert felt as though a spear of ice had entered his heart. He pulled away slowly, gently, so not to send Luca into another spiral of panic.

“What’s wrong?” Luca’s eyes were wide with worry.

“A beastly hangover, I’m afraid,” Robert said, with forced lightness. “Anyway, it seems my sad story has rather dominated the conversation thus far. What about you? What about your – life, here?”

Luca dropped his gaze. His hand slipped from Robert’s, rose to twist a stray braid fitfully between his fingers. When he spoke, his voice was distant, almost dreamlike. “My master has been very good to me.”

Robert gestured to the bruise on Luca’s cheek. “So I see.”

“If it wasn’t for my master I would be dead,” Luca said, with the flat, remote quality of a lesson being recited. “I am very grateful for my master’s mercy.” He shook his head abruptly. “Please, I don’t – please don’t ask me — ”

Robert felt the spear slide in deeper, colder. “I’ve a proper talent for saying the wrong thing, don’t I?” He cupped Luca’s hands in his, as gently as he would a butterfly. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

A brief smile dimpled Luca’s cheek. “You called me sweetheart,” he said softly.

“Of course. That’s what I used to call you, remember?”

Luca nodded. He looked up at Robert from under a thick fringe of eyelash, almost shyly. “What are you studying at College?”

Robert quirked an eyebrow. “College? What makes you think I haven’t become a gentleman of leisure?” Luca looked pointedly at Robert’s inky sleeves. Robert laughed. “Good eye! I am at College, as it happens. My subject is law, naturally – I’ll be inheriting Grandfather’s seat on the High Council – but I’m under-majoring in philosophy.”

Luca’s eyes went wide. “You must be brilliant,” he said, awed.

Robert snorted. “Hardly. The more time I spend at College, the less I have to spend at Court. I share an an upper-form garret on the grounds with a few friends. It will be much too small for the both of us, of course. Once I buy you — ”

“You’re going to buy me?”

“Goose. Of course I am.”

Luca looked so faint that Robert almost put out his arms to catch him.

“I will make such a life for us, Luca,” he said softly. “I have money. Too much money. Whatever you desire, it’s yours. I’ll build you a library – a magnificent library, full of more books than you could read in a lifetime. We’ll travel. Museums, fine food.” He brushed his thumb across Luca’s quivering chin. “I’ll – I’ll even buy you a camel if that’s what you want.”

Luca laughed shakily. “I don’t want a camel.”

“Probably for the best,” Robert admitted. “They spit. But whatever else.”

“I don’t need anything,” Luca said. Robert’s hands were in his, gripped so tightly his fingers were going numb. “I – it’s stupid, isn’t it, to say I only need you?”

Robert felt his throat get thick. “You have me,” he said. “In fact, you’re stuck with me. I’m not going to let you go. All right? Never again.”

Luca nodded. Suddenly he pulled Robert to him, pressed his mouth to Robert’s and kissed him so fiercely that Robert utterly lost his breath.

“Never again?” Luca said, voice urgent.

“Never,” Robert said, gripping Luca to him. “Never.”

 

Of course he did have to let Luca go eventually. The eunuch arrived at the door, all obsequious genuflections and humble apologies for the unpardonable interruption, begging my lord’s forgiveness, but the Golden Bird was booked for the afternoon. Would my lord perhaps like to make another appointment?

“Most definitely,” Robert said. “As soon as possible.”

The eunuch positively beamed. “It shall be arranged. If my lord would follow me to my master’s office?”

“In a moment.” Robert stood, pulling Luca up with him. Gods, he was light. He stumbled into Robert’s chest. Robert held him there – his hand fit perfectly in the hollow of Luca’s back, his chin perfectly on top of Luca’s head. What was this miracle of human physiology that made two people joint together like this, as though there wasn’t even a seam between them?

“I’ll be back,” he murmured into Luca’s hair. “Quick as I can. All right?”

Luca nodded, cheek against Robert’s chest. Robert tipped Luca’s chin up and kissed his forehead, his temple, the tip of his nose.

“All right?” Robert said again, voice gruff.

Luca’s eyes were glassy. “Yes, Rob — ” He stopped himself, said instead, loud enough for the eunuch to hear, “Yes, my lord.”

Robert kissed him once more, quick and hard on the mouth. And, _gods_ , what an awful trick to be joined together so completely only to be wrenched apart again. He cast Luca a final look over his shoulder before following the eunuch from the room, leaving Luca, shadow-eyed, shivering, and alone.

 

The offices of Gregori Boq were as lavish as his parlor had been. Some trompe-l'œil effect had been daubed onto the walls, making them look like old plaster vaulted with marble pillars, and the floor was inlaid with patterned tile. It looked like the inside of a temple. Boq, sitting on a massive lime-green armchair with a tuffet under his bloated feet, was clearly its High Priest.

“Gracious lord!” Boq heaved himself to his feet, face turning a dangerous shade of maroon. “I –  _huff_ – I hope that my lord’s appointment proved satisfactory.”

“Oh, it did.”

Boq clapped his hands together, beaming. “Wonderful!”

“In fact,” Robert said, “I want to buy him.” Once the words were out more came babbling up from some deep inner well of stupidity. “I can pay cash, coin, dinae, whatever currency you prefer. I have accounts here in Lyonesse as well as abroad. Well, my grandfather has accounts. But I have access. Well, I will have access. What I’m trying to say is that money is no object.” Robert knew he was making a pig’s breakfast out of things, but didn’t know how to stop. “I – I have an allowance,” he finished lamely, and immediately wanted to hit himself. I have an allowance. What was he, twelve?

Boq’s eyebrows experienced an interesting contortion. He looked as though he were attempting to smother an expression of pure, mad glee. Robert imagined for a moment that he was going to leap into the air and click his heels. Instead he smoothed his greasy beard into a sharper point and said, with strained composure, “My lord flatters me with his enthusiasm. Sherry?”

Robert’s hangover lurched in his stomach. “Er, no,” he said tactfully. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Boq lumbered over to his desk, upon which was a carafe half-full of sherry. He poured himself a tumbler-full and took a deep draught. When he turned back to Robert his face was pink and shining.

“Well well well,” said Boq, steepling his fingers over his gut. “So you wish to buy the Golden Bird. You are far from alone in your appreciation of the boy’s charms, lord. He is one of our most celebrated offerings.”

Robert forced himself to shrug and say, with a flippancy that seared his tongue, “He is very beautiful.”

Boq swelled in his robes like an inflated balloon. “My lord is most kind,” he preened, stroking his oily little beard. “Of all my lovely blooms, I daresay he is the most exquisite.” He tilted his head almost coquettishly, tugging at one corkscrew curl with a glittering, bejeweled finger. “His mouth, my lord. Have you ever enjoyed so skilled a tongue? And his arse – as plump and sweet as a ripe peach.”

Robert felt ill. He looked away so that Boq wouldn’t see his expression of disgust and asked, tone as level as he could manage, “How much do you want for him?”

“Ah,” said Boq, “the heart of the matter, hm?” His eyes twinkled redly in the glow of the sherry. “I cannot say that I am much surprised at your offer, my lord. It was immediately apparent to me that the boy had left quite an impression upon you.”

Robert was in no mood for this. “How much?” he said again, voice edged with impatience.

Boq smiled indulgently. “Were it was so simple a matter! I would not suppose my lord is much acquainted with the trade in pleasure-slaves?”

“I’m afraid not,” Robert said through clenched teeth. “A failure in my otherwise impeccable education.”

Boq’s smile faltered and cooled. “My lord has a sense of humor.” He took a deep draught of sherry. “Well. It would perhaps surprise you to know that beauty is not a static commodity. My flowers, like all lovely young blooms, are naturally wilted by the rot of time. I myself never keep a slave past the age of twenty-seven, by which time I have usually repackaged them as novelty items for gentleman of particular tastes. Now, the Golden Bird is seventeen, perhaps eighteen. His popularity grows by the day. So too, naturally, does his value —”

“A number, please,” Robert interrupted, voice blaring with anger. “Give me a price and I shall pay it.”

“Alas,” said Boq, “I cannot.”

Robert altogether lost his patience. Had his walking-stick been to hand he would probably have smacked Boq upside the head with it. Instead he slammed his hands palm-down upon the table, which made a satisfying crack.

“Does it amuse you to waste my time?” he shouted. “I do not look lightly upon being played for a fool!”

Boq threw up his hands. “My lord, please! You misunderstand — ”

“Then furnish a less misleading explanation!”

“I am a man of business,” Boq said quickly. “I must turn my mind always toward profit. Given the Bird’s popularity and his beauty, I hope for a particularly impressive career from him. If I sold him now I would stand to lose not only all future profit but also any future prestige the House may accrue from him. There is also the issue of the other buyer — ”

“Other buyer?”

“A gentleman of great wealth and esteem,” said Boq, “and he has the prior claim.”

“And why, pray,” Robert growled, “would you enter into a negotiation with me when you plan to sell Luc – the slave to someone else?”

“I said that there was a prior claim, not a staked claim,” Boq said, sounding rather offended.

Robert took a deep breath, remembering what Grandfather had said about maintaining a serene demeanor during diplomatic situations. “This other gentleman,” he said, in what he hoped were tones of serenity. “How much has he offered you?”

Boq smoothed his beard, looking coy. “Surely you cannot expect me to divulge that information, my lord. I will say, however, that the sum was...substantial.”

“I can match whatever bid he has entered,” Robert said, refusing to think whether or not this might actually be true.

“Perhaps so,” said Boq. “However, I told this gentleman what I will now tell you: I am not willing to sell the Bird until he reaches the age of one-and-twenty.”

Robert fought the temptation to throw down screaming and drumming his heels on the carpet in sheerest bloody frustration.

“That’s over three years away,” he said, with dangerous calm. “You are asking me to wait three years in order to get into a bidding war?”

Boq spread his hands, face a reddened rictus of false sympathy. “I can hardly be expected to apologize for the boy’s success, my lord.”

If he had been in his study at College Robert would have started kicking over chairs, or at the very least begun chain-smoking in earnest. As it was he was restricted to shoving his hands into his coat pockets and scowling ferociously.

“Is there no amount of money that can persuade you to change your mind?”

Boq smiled slantways, tugged his beard and gave no answer.

“And what if — ” Robert stopped, fists clenching in his pockets. “And what if I – what if I begged?”

Boq widened his eyes theatrically. “Has the boy so entranced you, my lord?”

“That is none of your concern!” Humiliation was rising hot to his cheeks. “He – there were – bruises – and last night – I will not have him hurt!”

Robert found that he was gesticulating with hands still shoved in his pockets, the effect being that he seemed to be flapping his arms like some sort of mad crow. Boq looked faintly alarmed. Robert hurriedly brought his arms back down to his sides.

“I will not have him hurt,” he said again. “It – displeases me.”

“The boy’s patrons may be informed that he is to be handled carefully,” Boq said. “For a fee.”

Robert gave a short bark of laughter. “Of course,” he said. “How much?”

Boq named the sum. Robert winced. It would take a considerable amount of his monthly allowance. Still, going without a new fencing épée would hardly be an unbearable sacrifice, especially if it ensured Luca wouldn’t be damaged. Not physically, at least.

“When can I see him again?” Robert asked, fighting back a black swell of resentment that he had to ask this man’s permission for anything.

“There is usually a waiting period for his services,” Boq replied, ingratiating smile back in full force, “but for your lordship I’m sure we can arrange something much sooner.” He produced a fat leather book from the folds of his robe. “Does this week suit?” he asked, rifling through the gilt-edged pages.

“As soon as possible,” Robert said. His voice sounded strange, suddenly too high, too thin. Without substance.

“This patron looks expendable,” Boq murmured to himself, crossing something off. “Tomorrow at noon? A midday delicacy for my lordship’s delight,” he added, with a lewd grin.

“That’s fine.”

“I shall book my lord for two hours.” Boq made a mark on the page. “As for the charge — ”

“I’ll bring cash.” Robert sighed inwardly, thinking of what he owed College for that statue of the founder he and Hugo had drunkenly defaced. “But he’ll be well-treated – I have your word?”

“Of course,” said Boq genially. Without warning he lunged for Robert’s hand and shook it with such force that his chins quivered. “Forgive my boldness, sir – it is an honor to count such an esteemed personage among our clientele. “I have a feeling that this is the beginning of a mutually beneficial business relationship!”

“Yes,” said Robert. He felt empty.

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

 The door closed behind Robert. Luca stood motionless in the middle of the room, straining his ears to catch the sound of Robert’s hand sliding down the banister, the murmur of his voice saying something to Bagoas. If he listened hard enough he could almost convince himself that he heard Robert’s feet on the stairs again. He could almost make himself believe that Robert was coming back.

  _He_ will _be back_ , Luca told himself sternly.  _He promised._

  _He promised before,_ a treacherous little voice whispered in his head. _He swore, didn’t he, swore you’d be together forever, that he’d never let anyone take you away from him. And you believed him, like an idiot. And here you are believing him again. Idiot._

And then, soft and teasing: _As if a man like him could want a_ thing _like you._

Luca shook his head abruptly. No. Robert would be back this time. It was different now. He was a lord, a _lord_ , and he was so tall, broad as oak, with a man’s thick arms that would wrap around Luca so tight that not even the Beast would be strong enough to tear him away.

Robert would come back. He had to.

Luca had himself so close to convinced that when the door flung open again he was sure for a brief instant that it was Robert. But no – it was Bagoas who swept inside, pink-faced and gleeful.

“The lord is speaking with our master,” Bagoas announced. “Making an offer for you, I have no doubt. You had him eating out of your hand, Luca! He was mooning over you like a lovestruck schoolboy. Have you any idea what this might mean for us? The grandson of the king’s advisor on our books! Not even Bridda — ” He stopped, narrowed his eyes. “Have you been crying?”

“Dust,” said Luca quickly. “Dust is all.”

Bagoas pursed his lips, disbelieving. “Did you have to use the ring?”

Luca shook his head. “No. My lord was gentle with me.” He thought of Robert’s hands cupping his face, Robert’s lips brushing his throat. “My lord was kind,” he whispered, almost to himself.

“Hm.” Bagoas arched an incredulous eyebrow. “I see you enjoyed his company.”

Luca felt himself flush. “I – I am pleased to bring honor to the House,” he said, dropping his gaze. “My only thought is to serve my master.”

“Of course,” said Bagoas. Still, the shade of doubt lingered in the furrow of his brow. When he spoke, his voice had cooled considerably. “And of course this will ensure your advancement. Congratulations, Luca.”

For a moment Luca couldn’t think what he meant. Then the previous night’s conversation came rushing back to him.

“Of course,” he echoed stupidly. “I – I suppose I’ll have Asher dust, then.” The comment was so inane he felt himself flush again. He’d be turning permanently fuschia at this rate, and then Robbie —  _Robert_ , he reminded himself — wouldn’t want to kiss him at all.

Bagoas was still frowning. “Luca,” he began. Then he cut himself off with a curt movement of his hand. “Your shift begins in twenty minutes. Try not to let the men smudge your maquillage this time. Those bruises are unsightly.”

“Yes, Bogoas,” said Luca, scarcely listening. He was too busy thinking about Robert kissing him again.  
  
  
  
Luca was still thinking about Robert as he prepared for his shift. He went through the motions of reapplying maquillage, wincing to see the bloom of purple under his eye. Absently, he selected a belt of hammered brass dics in case one of his afternoon patrons would order him to dance. He drank a carafe of cold tea without tasting it. When he oiled himself there was only the ghost of pain.

None of it felt real somehow. In his mind he was still in High Parlor, holding Robert’s hands in his own.

Luca was jolted back to reality by the arrival of his first appointment. Sir Percy sidled through the door, smoothing down his brush of moustache with two fingers. Sir Percy was a brisk middle-aged man with thinning hair and features so bland it was difficult for Luca to remember them even after years of serving him. The smell of the salted herring canned in his factories clung to his suit and hands. He liked to fuck Luca from behind and always came too soon.

All this Luca noted with the detachment of a clerk reviewing his figures. He summoned a smile to his lips and purred the man’s name.

The fucking was abrupt and uninspired, as always. After Sir Percy sidled out the door, this time wearing a smirk of satisfaction, Luca rolled off the bed and trotted to the wash-basin hidden behind a screen. He cleaned the semen from his ass and applied lavender water to hide the smell of herring.

What was Robert doing now, he wondered? Lunching with his highborn friends? Luca remembered the dandyboy from last night, the one who’d had his head in Robert’s lap. Rich, he’d been. And handsome...

Luca banished the thought with a firm shake of his head. Of course Robert had lovers. He was a noble. He was brilliant. He had clever hands and hair like autumn and a smile that was sweet and wicked all at once, and when he laughed it seemed to fill every corner of the room, and when he was serious his eyes went as wise and vivid as a god’s. Men were probably tripping each other to earn his favor. Besides, Luca was a slave. He could never be Robert’s beloved. He could only be Robert’s whore.

But remembering the way Robert had kissed him, Luca thought that being Robert’s whore would be enough.  
  
  
The next patron was a muscular, craggy-faced man who bounded into the room like a terrier. Captain Sprottle, vice-head of the Watch. Luca jumped into his arms, giggling, and squealed when Sprottle bore him down on the bed. Sprottle grinned, showing rows of broken teeth.

“Let’s play, gorgeous,” he said.

Sprottle’s “play” involved at least twelve different positions and a deep energetic thrusting that left Luca faint with pain. He didn’t use the ring, afraid Sprottle would notice. The fucking stretched out for what felt like hours, Sprottle stopping frequently to rearrange Luca or to take gulps of water from the flask he had brought with him. Still, Luca forced his aching body to respond, grinding back on the man’s cock and making moans and sighs of feigned pleasure. When it was over Sprottle gave him a hearty kiss and went bounding out of the room again.

Luca allowed himself a few moments of rest on the soft bed before forcing himself up and back to the wash-basin. There was an oatcake on the counter. Lunch. He divided the cake into thirds, saving one part for Asher and one to sacrifice on Ganymene’s altar. The last he ate himself. His stomach had stopped growling years ago, but the emptiness still echoed, even after the oatcake.

Luca forced his mind away from hunger. It wasn’t difficult. He’d had a lifetime of practice.

When the door opened and the next patron hobbled in Luca didn’t have to fake his smile. It was Lord Fulke, more ancient with every appointment.

“I swear you grow lovelier each time I see you,” said Lord Fulke, his voice as dry and aged as the pages of an old book. He stooped, wincing, and kissed Luca’s hand.

“How is your back today, my lord?” Luca asked.

“All the better for your asking,” said Lord Fulke. “I do seem to have developed a troublesome ache just here.” He gestured to the place, smiling almost apologetically. “Perhaps you could—?”

“Of course, my lord.”

Luca helped Lord Fulke out of his robes and vest. He could see the ache immediately, hitching up Lord Fulke’s shoulder-blade at an uncomfortable angle. Luca grimaced in sympathy. He rubbed his hands to warm them and began. Carefully he soothed the ache from Lord Fulke’s side, kneading knotted muscles until the lord sighed in pleasure.

The one sort of pleasure quickly gave way to another, as it always did. Lord Fulke turned over. His flaccid penis lay curled like a snail. Luca began with his hands, patiently coaxing Lord Fulke to hardness before taking him into his mouth. Lord Fulke sighed again, stroking Luca’s hair. Luca couldn’t help leaning into the touch.

Halfway through the blowjob Lord Fulke softened. Luca licked and sucked desperately, panic blooming in his chest as the prick in his mouth refused to respond. He almost sobbed in frustration when Lord Fulke pushed him gently away.

“Please, my lord, forgive me, please, let me try again, I beg you, let me serve —”

Lord Fulke waved his hand. “Now, my dear!” he said, voice mild and rich with humor. “You are the most beautiful boy in Lyonesse, but you’re not a miracle worker.”

Luca laughed weakly. “I - I would work miracles for you, my lord.”

Lord Fulke chuckled. He pulled Luca up so that they lay together, Luca’s head resting on Lord Fulke’s chest.

“You would make me a young man again, with a cock like a battering ram?” Lord Fulke asked. “Well, perhaps I’d thank you for it.”

He ran his hand over Luca’s shoulders, down his back, over his ass and thighs. Luca parted his legs obediently, but Lord Fulke only kissed his forehead and rested his hand on Luca’s hip.

“Have I told you that my eldest daughter is engaged?” Lord Fulke raised his bushy eyebrows in an expression of mock horror.

Luca giggled. “Congratulations, my lord.”

“Samell,” Lord Fulke corrected, as he always did.

The man’s first name still felt forbidden. “Congratulations, Samell,” Luca said, then cringed instinctively, expecting a blow he knew wouldn’t come.

“Yes, well...he’s a good boy, this beau of hers,” said Lord Fulke reflectively. “From a good family. They’ll be happy, I think. Happier than my wife and I, in any case.” He sighed, brows knitting. “Not that it would be difficult.”

Lord Fulke broke off. There was a long silence. Luca tried frantically to decide whether it would be a bad idea to grab Lord Fulke’s prick again. It always boded ill when a patron went brooding during an appointment, and Luca was always the one who suffered for it.

Fortunately Lord Fulke merely shrugged and said, “But enough. I wouldn’t want to see your beautiful face spoiled by a yawn.” He laid a light kiss on Luca’s forehead. “Here, take a look in my vest pocket and see what you find.”

Luca scrambled across the bed and took up the vest. He drew a pair of earrings from the pocket: delicate laurel leaves wrought in gold.

 _I’ll never be allowed to keep them_ , he thought.

Still, he summoned what he hoped was an expression of deepest gratitude. “My lord – Samell  – thank you, sir.”

“For Bacchanal, you know,” said Lord Fulke, sitting up in bed. “Here, let’s see them on you.”

Luca removed the cheap dangling earrings he wore and replaced them with the laurel leaves. He lifted his hair from his shoulders and turned his head from side to side so Lord Fulke could see.

Lord Fulke nodded in satisfaction. “You honor the god with your beauty, my dear.”

He took Luca’s wrists and pulled him in, so that Luca straddled his lap. Luca let his hair fall. The ends brushed Lord Fulke’s thighs, his crotch; he shivered. Luca slid his palms over Lord Fulke’s chest, across the loose skin over his ribs, and caught Lord Fulke’s earlobe between his teeth. He felt the man stir beneath him.

“It seems you can work miracles after all,” Lord Fulke said, raising his eyebrows.

Luca smiled. He went on smiling as he dropped to his knees between Lord Fulke’s legs. When Lord Fulke closed his eyes, Luca's expression wiped blank. He licked his lips, opened his mouth, and sucked the lord’s prick inside.

Lord Fulke came within moments, making choked noises and petting Luca’s hair. Luca swallowed dutifully and waited, hands folded behind his back, until Lord Fulke tapped his shoulder. He rose to see Lord Fulke’s face creased and beaming, alight with a look Luca would never be bold enough to call gratitude.

“My sweet, good boy,” Lord Fulke murmured, embracing him. “My dear pretty one.”

Abruptly Luca thought of Robert.  _Sweetheart_ , Robert had called him.  _Perfect_. And the way Robert had looked at him, a half-smile crinkling the corner of his mouth. As if Luca wasn’t just a whore still bruised and filthy from his last customer. As if he was something precious.

The earrings suddenly felt as heavy as lead.

“I am pleased to serve you, sir,” Luca said mechanically. “Thank you for using me.”

Though he had said them a thousand times, the words had never before tasted as bitter.

 


	12. Chapter 12

 

By the time Robert arrived back at the flat it had begun to rain. Cold water soaked his hair and dribbled unpleasantly down the back of his neck. He hardly noticed. In fact, he was so sunk in private misery that when Hugo shouted something at him he almost didn’t hear.

“What?” Robert said, blinking the mist from his eyes.

Hugo sprawled across the couch by the fire, long legs kicking over the far arm. Val was studying in the moth-eaten chair by the door. He sighed as Robert’s entrance let in a gust of rainy wind, spattering the notes he had been taking.

"Hugo asked,” Val said, “if you had – what was the phrase you used, Hugo? Oh yes: ‘gotten any ass’ last night.”

“You could make Bacchanal sound as interesting as a literature tutorial, Val,” Hugo retorted. He ignored Val muttering that literature tutorials  _were_ interesting and turned to Robert. “So! Tell. How many boys?”

Robert cast off his jacket on the back of Val’s chair. “One.”

At this even Val looked up with a noise of surprise. Hugo goggled.

“Only  _one_? On  _Bacchanal?_  You’re joking!”

“I’m afraid not.” Robert untangled the ribbon from his hair. “What about you, Hugo? Seduce any titled ladies from their husband’s carriages?”

Hugo waved a hand. “Oh, a few. But you won’t put me off that easily. Did you pass out in a gutter before you could find a second willing gent, then?”

Robert winced. Hugo wasn’t far off. “I’ll have you know I was waylaid on urgent business,” he said loftily.

Hugo grinned. “Did your urgent business take you by the Harlequin?”

Robert started. “You knew!”

“Of course.” Hugo’s grin grew wider. “Francis told me. He gets chatty when he thinks he's been clever.”

“You no doubt think it a marvelous joke,” Robert said sourly.

“I do, actually,” Hugo chuckled. “Oh, don’t glare at me over your nose like that. Francis was doing you a favor. We all know you’ve been moping since Adrian left you—”

“ _I_ was the one who did the leaving!”

“—and you were in desperate need of a good lay. Roll your eyes all you like, you know it’s true. You’ve been sulking around the flat for weeks, snapping at everyone, masturbating constantly, and paying far too much attention to your studies. It’s been frankly depressing to watch. We already have one miserable celibate in the place.” He jerked a thumb at Val. “Add another and you might as well hang a sign over the door that says CONVENT.”

“I am not  _celibate_ ,” Val said indignantly. Hugo ignored him.

“I suppose,” said Robert, “that Francis informed you Adrian would be in attendance?”

Hugo waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Well? Did the pair of you take the Ganymene from both ends?”

Robert went hot and cold all over. He made a noise somewhere between a bark of laughter and a howl of anguish, grabbed handfuls of wet hair, and doubled over.

Before Hugo could comment, the door to the kitchen swung open and Barnabas emerged, chewing a slice of kippers on toast.

“I heard rather a shout,” said Barnabas thickly. “Everything all right, then?”

Robert gave what he feared was a somewhat mad-sounding laugh. “Oh, yes,” he said, straightening. “Never better.”

Barnabas swallowed, gesturing to the cloakrack with his toast. “Grossie – Lord Grosvenor, you know – returned your cloak. Said he woke up under it in Paradiso and found your card and cigarette case in the pocket.”

“Sterling generosity,” Hugo said. “Did you gift your regalia to a beggar too, then?”

“No, but I promised my fortune to a Harlequin whore,” Robert shot back. “Did I have any other callers? A circus of prostitutes sent courtesy of my dear cousin, perhaps?”

“Actually,” Val said, “Professor Gregory did stop by this morning.”

Robert gave another mad laugh. He didn't seem able to help it. “Yes, to order up another ream of seditious tracts for the Falcon.”

“It isn’t sedition!” Val said hotly. “Philip of Guye is the rightful king of Lyonesse. King Eustace —”

“— is a mad bastard. I know, I know.” Robert sighed. Professor Gregory hadn’t been wrong to say that Robert regarded their work for the Resistance as a game, but Robert feared Val took it altogether too seriously.

“You also had a runner from House d’Argent,” said Hugo, not to be outdone.

“Oh, great and little  _gods_ ,” Robert groaned. “With a summons, I suppose?”

“Your grandfather expects you for high tea this afternoon,” Hugo recited. “You will arrive promptly at four. You will be appropriately attired. The conversation will touch upon the finer points of Erminian law, and you are expected to have an intelligent opinion on the subject. You will not attempt to delay, reschedule, play truant, or send a minstrel in your absence.” He hesitated. “There were some threats after that, but they were so elaborately vague that I’ve forgotten them. Anyway, bad things will happen if you don’t go. Oh, and make sure your hair is combed.”

“Right,” said Robert. “Well. Damn.”

 

 

  
House d’Argent stood on the high bank behind the spire of the Consecration, a majestic bulk of white brick and dark, gleaming windows. As Robert peered out from the carriage that bore him up the drive he couldn’t help thinking that those windows looked unpleasantly like teeth in a white brick mouth, and the drive like a long tongue rolled out to swallow him in.

He was ushered from the carriage, up the front stairs and into the echoing marble entry hall by silent ranks of lackeys in blue and silver livery. Grandfather’s manservant Tolliver awaited between the double flanks of the grand staircases, hands folded officiously before him. Tolliver was outfitted as usual in a crisp black suit crossed by a blue and silver cummerbund. A pair of rimless spectacles perched on his nose. The lenses were so polished they looked like double mirrors, reflecting Robert’s own haggard face back at him.

Tolliver bowed, crisp as his suit. He turned on his heel and strode through a side door, beckoning Robert follow. Robert trailed miserably after.

Tolliver showed Robert into the Gray Parlor. Though the walls were high and bare and the aesthetic decidedly severe, Robert was still reminded unpleasantly of Boq’s office. The impression was compounded by the pages standing at attention in each corner. Robert thought of the child-slave who had cried out on stage the night before; of Luca, no older, glassy-eyed and mute after one of Lord Frederick’s parties.

_Gods_. Robert pressed his knuckles against his eyes and wished desperately for a drink.

Grandfather left Robert waiting in the Gray Parlor for ten minutes precisely. Robert timed it on the mantelpiece clock as he paced around the room, humming tunelessly and fiddling with the wall fixtures. Even though Grandfather always made his entry after ten minutes to the second, Robert was, as always, caught unaware when the doors swung open and Grandfather strode in.

Robert shoved the cornice he’d been poking at back into place, yanked the front of his shirt straight, and bowed in what he hoped was a single fluid movement.

“Good evening, my lord,” he said, in his best Court manner.

“Good evening, my son,” said Grandfather. His voice rolled through the room like a funeral skirl. “I see you are in a more tractable mood than usual. I had feared my summons would be insufficient to fetch you after your Bacchanal glut.”

Robert felt his collar tighten like a noose. “Oh, hardly a  _glut_ , Grandfather,” he managed to squeak around the constriction.

“No,” said Grandfather, assembling himself on a chair. “I suppose with your appetite, Bacchanal was merely a light refreshment.”

While Robert tried to form a rejoinder, Grandfather made a gesture to the pages. The boys withdrew, returning moments later with covered platters. These were arranged quietly and efficiently on the table before Grandfather.

“Do you care to sit, my son? Or shall you hover like a servant?”

Robert scrambled into the chair across from Grandfather. His knees knocked the table, and only his sword-honed reflexes saved a plate of bannocks from toppling to the carpet.

Grandfather did not sigh. He didn’t have to. Instead the emanation of disapproval about his person grew ever so slightly more potent.

The tea was, as usual, lukewarm and over-steeped. Though milk and sugar would have rendered the brew far more palatable, Robert refused both. Grandfather did not approve of such extravagances; they were, Robert knew, offered only as a test. Robert chose a hard biscuit from the carousel, forgoing (as Grandfather did) the pot of jam proffered by the pages. Instead he filled his mouth with tea and strained each bite of biscuit through the tea until the crumbs were soggy enough to swallow.

While Robert dismantled his biscuit, Grandfather lectured. Grandfather was either an excellent lecturer or a dismal one, depending on your perspective. Robert had attended many lectures during his three years at College, and had come to the conclusion that the quality of a lecture was determined first by its length, then by the animation of its delivery, and finally by the interest of its subject. Grandfather’s lectures were interminable, monotonous, and ruthlessly, punishingly dull. His topics of choice ranged from the defects of Robert’s personality to the military failures of the Ancient Carcaelians, and on a good day he could cover the entire catalogue of the world’s deficiencies before supper.

It was a good day. By the time Robert had toiled his way through four cups of tea, three biscuits and a bran cake, Grandfather had expounded upon the inadequacies of the first thousand years of Lyonesse's political history and was moving on to the second.

Robert tried to pay attention. He always did. But Grandfather’s voice so sonorous and his subject so tedious that Robert soon gave up and allowed his thoughts to return, inevitably, to Luca. Luca gripping Robert so tightly with his thin, urgent hands; Luca ducking to hide his shy half-smile; Luca sighing as he was kissed. Did Luca still love to read? There hadn’t been time to ask. Well, Robert would bring a book tomorrow – a comedy, perhaps, gods knew there must be precious little cheer in that rotting brothel – and a box of chocolate as well, Luca used to love sweets…

Robert was startled from his reverie by the clang of Grandfather’s cane against the tiles.

"Are you attending, my son, or wool-gathering?” Grandfather said severely.

“Wool-gathering,” Robert admitted.

“You will now attend.”

Grandfather began to lecture again. The address had, if anything, become even more boring since Robert last tuned in.

“Grandfather,” Robert said suddenly, “what do you know about slave law?”

There was a distinctly chilly pause. “It is not,” Grandfather said, “a subject on which I can boast a breadth of knowledge. Property disputes are heard in Quorum and rarely reach the Grand Council. Are you considering taking up the subject for your thesis, my son?"

"No, no,” Robert said hastily. “My thesis will be on political law, of course. I – I came across a remark upon slavery in a text, that’s all.” The lie immediately presented practical purpose. Robert shrugged artfully and continued, “Something about the Northern tribes, as I remember. The author said that they were a free people once?”

“Naturally, my son,” said Grandfather impatiently. “They were made chattel by decree during the reign of King Abelard. Indeed, it was a kindness. The barbarians had no civilization to speak of. They lived in caves, warred constantly, and were forever sacrificing each other to that bloodthirsty goddess of theirs. The phrase 'brainless as a barbarian'is not merely a rhetorical flourish; in intellect these Northerners truly are more like animals than people.”

Robert thought of teaching Luca to read, Luca's brow furrowing with concentration as he traced the letters over and over and whispered the alphabet like a prayer. He'd learned so fast, Robert could barely keep up.  _You're smart_ , Robert had told him. Luca had shaken his head.  _Stupid_ _barbarian_ _whore_ , he'd said.  _Only good to fuck._

Who had taught him that? Men like Grandfather?

“Still,” Grandfather continued, “even the thickest ox can be bent to its master’s purpose, if the rod is strong and the hand unsparing. And the field, my son, is fecund indeed. The Northern mountains run rich with minerals. Most of our salt and coal is slave-mined. Our copper, lead, tin, iron, and precious metals are all got from barbarian labor, and you won’t find a diamond in Lyonesse that wasn’t pried from rock by barbarian hands. And of course, while we do  _not_  approve of the callow theatrics of the arena –” Grandfather rapped his cane for emphasis – “barbarians do, it must be admitted, make for the most excellent gladiators. Proof of their brutish and belligerent natures, of course.”

“One does hear of unrest from time to time,” Robert remarked. “Uprisings, that sort of thing.”

Grandfather waved a hand. “Bulls balking at the yoke. The king’s rule is no danger from a few spear-rattling malcontents, whether savage Northmen or sons of Lyonesse.” His expression darkened. “Upon which subject. Have you heard of the Falcon?”

Robert’s mouth went dry. He licked his lips and managed a shrug. “I can’t say I have.” Could Grandfather detect the subtle tremor of panic in his voice? “But then, my studies leave little time for birdwatching. In fact, I'm not even sure I would know a falcon if I saw one. I don't think they're native to this part of the country,” he went on, babbling now.

Fortunately Grandfather cut Robert off before he could blither his way into a confession. “The Falcon I refer to is no bird,” he said, “but a traitor to the Crown. This mongrel, this coward, this, this  _agitator_ has set his pen against King and Quorum. Why, only a fortnight ago Commander Sprottle brought me one of his broadsheets—a note of sedition so vile that even the most insolent drunkard in Hornfleur Wharf would not have had the gall to utter its sentiments. The Falcon suggested that indentured dockworkers ought seize the shipyards! By force of arms, mind you! And what ought these brutes  _do_ with the shipyards? Why, sail the king's fleet to Guye and make a navy for the Exile! I ask you!”

Ah, one of Val's. Robert recognized his touch. When Val was writing as the Falcon he waxed lyrical on the plight of the worker, and always threw in a rousing word of support for Prince Philip. Hugo, ever practical, was far more concerned with overturning prohibitions against the public theater and repealing the sumptuary laws. As for Robert, he tended to write florid and (in his opinion) devastatingly clever critiques of repression at College and corruption at Court. All of them spoke against King Eustace, of course, though Val was probably the only one who really meant it. Robert suspected that of the three, his own essays were least likely to inspire a coup.

“A dangerous man indeed,” Robert said, trying to keep a straight face. “What is to be done about him?”

“Are you not a student of law, my son?” said Grandfather, suddenly sharp. “You know the penalty for treason.”

Bodies swinging from the gibbets in Capitol Square. Bulging tongues and crow-pecked eyes. Oh yes, Robert knew very well indeed the penalty for treason.

This avenue of conversation was cutting uncomfortably close. Robert took another biscuit to hide his disconcertion. Then, seeing Grandfather's scowl, he quickly put it back down again. No more than three biscuits at tea. He'd almost forgotten.

“Can I have an advance on my allowance?” Robert asked, affecting his best Court wheedle. “I need a new set of robes. For exams, you know.”

“In that case, I must insist you use my tailor,” said Grandfather, casting a critical eye over Robert's jacket. “Yours never fails to make you look like a scarecrow in farmer's castoffs.” Before Robert could reply, Grandfather continued, “I suppose this month's allowance has already been squandered upon your Bacchanal foolishness?”

The unfairness of it rose Robert's gorge, but he could hardly tell Grandfather that the money had disappeared into the pocket of a Paradiso whoremonger. Instead he tucked his chin and muttered, “My lord knows me well.”

Grandfather's lips narrowed to a thin line of disapproval. “Perhaps a month of poverty will teach you restraint.”

When Robert opened his mouth to object, Grandfather brought his cane down across the table. Bran cakes went flying.

“You will learn to conduct yourself in a manner befitting the station to which I have raised you,” Grandfather said in a voice of terrifying calm. “I will not lose you to your profligacy as I lost your father. Now, my son,” he went on, settling back in his chair. “Tell me what you know of Erminian law.”


	13. Chapter 13

 

 

After Lord Fulke departed, Luca staggered back to the bed and threw himself belly-down. Oh,  _lovely_. Lovely soft bed. He snuggled into a pillow, not caring that it stank of Sir Percy’s sweat and Captain Sprottle’s cum. He’d never been allowed to rest in a bed like this. Beds were for getting fucked in. Even when Lord Frederick had kept Luca in his room for the night Luca had lain in his arms wide-eyed and sleepless, afraid that any moment his master would wake and demand service.

Luca’s eyelids grew heavy. A yawn escaped. What dreams nobles must have, sleeping like this all the time…

There came the sudden sound of someone clattering through the door. His eyes flew open and he leaped to his feet, ready to babble apologies and beg forgiveness from whatever forgotten patron had just barged in. When he saw who it was, he sagged with relief.

“You’re not supposed to use the front door,” he told Asher, trying to sound severe.

“Official business,” Asher said, tucking his thumbs into his belt and puffing out his chest. “Master wants you in his office.”

Luca stifled a groan. No time to read before the show tonight, then. And he had so wanted to read, just for a little while...

“Is it about the lord from last night?” Asher asked. “Did you send him running and screaming again?”

Luca dealt Asher a halfhearted swat as he passed through the door. Asher dodged it easily.

“He wasn't  _screaming,_ Asher. Don’t tell tales.”

“Why did the lord want to see you?” Asher trotted to catch up. “Varo took him breakfast, and  _he_ said the lord smelled. Did he smell? Bet he smelled. Did he hit you? You don’t look hit. Did he fuck you?”

“There’s half on oatcake by the washbasin,” Luca said. “Go eat it quick before the mice do. And leave Ganymene’s part!” he called after Asher’s back.

 

Master Boq's office was full of sherry fumes and the tinny whine of the phonograph. Master Boq himself was at his desk, absentmindedly tapping his ring against his glass in time to the aria. Bagoas stood at his side, head bowed so that the master could murmur something into his ear. Sark leaned against the wall, not smoking but looking as though he dearly wished to.

Luca sank to his knees, thighs apart, hands folded behind his back. Master Boq looked up and beamed.

“Ah, Luca!” Master Boq waved his hand in welcome. “My dear little bird! Here, look at me.”

Luca raised his face but kept his eyes cast down.

“There, Bagoas,” said Master Boq, “is the countenance upon which our fortunate shall be made. His fair features are like a fortuneteller's looking-glass. Look upon him! Do you see the future?” He slapped the desk with an open hand and raised his glass to toast. “To the future, Bagoas!”

 _Oh dear,_  Luca thought. Master was drunk again.

“The future, master.” Bagoas smiled tightly. “It is bright indeed.”   Master Boq took a deep draught of sherry. When he put down his glass it was empty.

“Now, boy,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Tell me everything. Every whisper, every caress. I want to hear in your words exactly how you seduced the heir to House d'Argent.”

Sark moved, a slight, snakelike jerk of his head. Bagoas's gaze flicked from Sark to Luca and back, mouth thinning into a line of displeasure.

“My lord likes to kiss,” said Luca carefully. “And to touch. My face, my chest. His hands – he has very gentle hands.”

Master Boq nodded, encouraging. “And how did he use you? Over the bed?”

Luca bit his lip. “Yes, master.”

“I imagine he reached his pleasure quickly,” Master Boq mused. “Eager as he was for your company.”

“Yes, master.”

“And afterwards, I suppose he stroked your hair and purred honeyed words in your ear?”

“Yes, master,” Luca whispered. His lip had split again; he tasted blood. “Yes, he did.”

Master Boq leaned back in his chair, abrim with satisfaction. “Excellent! My dear,  _good_  boy.” He lifted his glass, not noticing it was empty. “And those words, little bird. What did the lord tell you?”

Luca forced himself to answer. “My lord said he was at College.” Safe enough. “My lord studies law and philosophy. He lives in an upper-form garret on the grounds with his friends.” Why did the words feel as though they were being dragged from him on hooks?

Master Boq waved his hand impatiently. “Yes, yes. Did he say anything of his grandfather?”

“My lord will inherit his grandfather's seat on the High Council,” Luca said, hating himself.

“And politics? Did he speak of politics? Of Court?”

“He doesn't like Court,” Luca whispered. His eyes were stinging.

Master Boq sighed. “Did he say anything  _important_ , boy? Or did you merely lay there like a dead fish while he prattled on about the weather?”

Luca twisted his hands behind his back, wringing his fingers bloodless. No. No more. Master Boq could beat him, he'd been beaten before, gods, more times than he could count – it didn't hurt as much as this, as selling Robert to his master piece by piece. Luca had given Master Boq information about important patrons before, of course, reporting any interesting bits of gossip or remarks dropped as thoughtlessly as the man's breeches. But Robert was different. Even the lies were agony, Master Boq imagining Robert undressed, Robert bending Luca over...

 _No!_  No. Master couldn't have Robert. Robert was free.

“I beg you to forgive the boy's stupidity, master,” Bagoas said quickly. “Perhaps if he had more exact directives for the lord's next visit...”

“Hmph!” Master Boq slammed his glass down on the desk. “Is the little slut truly so stupid that he cannot even fuck information from a wine-addled noble?”

“Apparently,” said Sark, baring his teeth in a thoroughly humorless grin.

“I'm sorry, master.” Luca bowed low, letting his hair fall over his face. “I've failed you. Please punish me.”

Master Boq exhaled, nostrils flaring eloquently. He stabbed a fat finger at his empty glass. “Fix me another drink.”

Luca obeyed, keeping his gaze fixed on the floor. He didn't dare water down the sherry this time. He didn't want to think what would happen if Master Boq noticed.

“It is better, of course, that the boy should hold his tongue and learn nothing of value than pester the lord with importunate questions and drive him away,” Bagoas murmured soothingly.

“Better still that he should bring me useful information,” Master Boq snapped. “My contacts are not interested in whether Robert d'Argent studies law and lives with his bloody friends or not!”

Luca held out the glass, trying to keep his hand from shaking. The last thing he needed was to dump sherry all over his master's robes.

Master Boq snatched the glass, drank, and belched. Points of red appeared on his full cheeks.

“Come here, little bird,” Master Boq said, suddenly genial. He grabbed Luca's waist and pulled him close. “Sit on my lap.”

Luca straddled him, thighs open. Master Boq rested his hands comfortably on the small of Luca's back.

“You know that I am very pleased with you, don't you, Luca?” His breath was treacly and hot.

“I live to please my master,” Luca said automatically.

“That's my good boy.” Master Boq smiled, indulgent. “After all, it isn't your fault you haven't a thought in your pretty little head, is it?” He tapped a finger against Luca's temple. “Brainless barbarian.”

Luca forced himself to smile. “Yes, master. I'm terribly stupid. Thank you for your mercy.”

“Now, dearest.” Master Boq became businesslike. “Here is what you are to discover when the lord visits you tomorrow. Are you listening?”

“Yes, master.”

“Good. First, take note of his lordship's activities. Where does he spend his time when not in class or at Court, and in whose company? Who are his lovers, and how do they rank? My contacts also wish to know more of his lordship's circle within the College. Is he influenced by any of his professors in particular? My contacts are  _greatly_  interested in his lordship's professors.” He paused. “Do you understand?”

“I am to find out how my lord spends his time, and with who, and which of these are his lovers,” Luca recited. “I am to tell my master of his lordship's circle at College, particularly his lordship's professors. I understand, master.”

“Good boy,” said Master Boq.

“Good parrot,” muttered Sark.

Master Boq, taking another long sip of sherry, didn't hear. Bagoas shot Sark a warning look.

“Now, Luca,” said Master Boq, “I have some jolly news for you. The lord was quite taken with your lovely body. So taken, in fact, that he has paid no small amount to preserve it from harm.”

It took a moment for Luca to understand. He had to stifle a gasp. The protection fee? Robert had paid it?

“It seems his lordship likes his boys unbruised.” Master Boq squeezed Luca's ass for emphasis. Luca tried not to flinch. “Of course this means that the Councilor's slave will not be playing the satyr in tonight's performance. He'll be replaced by Tarquin's man from the Rosette.”

Relief made Luca weak. He wouldn't have to take the Beast tonight. Thank Goddess, he wouldn't have to take the Beast.

“Thank you, master,” he said, forcing his voice to stay even. “And – master, if I may be so bold as to ask – when will I have the honor of serving his lordship next?”

“Tomorrow. The Baron Delancey's usual time.”

Noon, then. Luca could survive until noon. If the patrons couldn't use him roughly that meant he'd have time to heal. And when Robert came tomorrow, Luca could thank him properly.

“The show approaches,” said Bagoas. “The boy must prepare.”

“Of course.”

Peremptorily, Master Boq shoved Luca off his lap. Luca landed crouched on his feet. He bowed, hand to his forehead, and backed away. He was almost to the door when Master Boq spoke.

“Oh, and Luca? Those earrings.”

Luca hesitated only a moment before unhooking the laurel leaves. They shone softly in the lamplight, like Ganymene's golden smile. The master crooked a finger. Luca crossed the room and placed the earrings in his outstretched palm.

“Expensive,” said Master Boq appreciatively. “Much too expensive to waste on a slave. Wouldn't you agree?”

“Yes, master,” Luca whispered.

Master Boq removed the heavy spangled hoops he wore and replaced them with the laurel leaves.

“What do you think?” Master Boq turned his head from side to side, chins swaying like a turkey's wattle.

Luca forced himself to smile. “Very handsome, master.”

Master Boq dismissed Luca with a wave of his hand. The last thing Luca saw before closing the door was Master Boq examining his reflection in the glass of sherry, gold gleaming against liquid the color of blood.

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

It was Robert's custom after being subjected to tea with Grandfather to spend an evening of dissipation at a gentleman’s club. Grandfather's perpetual disappointment, the endless catalog of Robert's faults – all would be forgotten in a haze of wine and sex. The next morning, of course, Robert would wake with his head aching, his purse missing, and Grandfather's remarks from the previous night ringing even louder in his ears. Still, the relief offered by the gentleman's clubs, however temporary, was potent enough to keep Robert coming back.

That night, however, Robert did not direct the driver to drop him off in the Lower District and make his way to the Arcade. He did not cruise the shady stretch between Bartleby Street and the Athol Baths, where men stood with their breeches unlaced, and where holes in the crumbling wall were put to thoroughly indecent purpose. When the carriage passed by the infamous Rosette Club, Robert pulled the curtain across his window and directed his mind to chaste thoughts.

Robert went straight home, boiled a pot of coffee, and wrote a scathing indictment of Erminian law. Then he staggered up the stairs, leaving a trail of discarded clothing as he went, and collapsed into bed.

The next morning he was awakened by Hugo thumping through the flat, bellowing the chorus from a popular musical. Hugo was always abominably cheerful before noon.

“Wake up, duckies!” Hugo crowed. “It's another beautiful day in the city, and we have class in twenty minutes!”

A spate of muffled swearing arose from Val's room. Next door, Barnabas groaned.

Robert was the last to shamble downstairs, bleary-eyed and nursing several nicks on the chin from his haphazard shave. He found the clothes he'd abandoned last night neatly folded over the banister.

“Good morning, Robert!” Hugo's grin was entirely too merry. “What a pretty picture you make. Did you get into an argument with your razor again?”

“Coffee,” Robert said plaintively.

Barnabas gestured with the piece of toasted sweetbread to the full pot over the hearth. Robert gulped down two cups of hot, gritty black coffee without tasting them. Once he was feeling slightly more human, he poured a third cup, lit a cigarette, and interspersed sips of the former with drags on the latter.

Hugo had spread several overdue homework assignments over the kitchen table and was switching between them, scribbling esoteric shorthand on his astronomy essay before dashing off a few paragraphs on his literature midterm. Val ran around the flat, combing his hair with his fingers and babbling that they were going to be late. Barnabas buttered another slice of sweetbread, oblivious to the chaos around him.

Despite Val's hysterical predictions, they all arrived at their respective classes on time. Robert slid onto the top bench, extinguishing his cigarette on the underside of the desk, just as Professor Farley began his lecture. The top bench was tacitly reserved for high nobility, an injustice that Robert took shameless advantage of. Its height allowed for a clear view of the board, while the lighting was such that, from the professor's view, the top bench was in shadow, allowing its occupants to nap, smoke, clip their toenails, and duck in and out of class unnoticed.

Thus obscured, Robert pulled out a sheet of parchment and filled his pen. He thought for a minute. Then, at the top of the page, he wrote:  _ **Ways and Means**_. A suitably vague title, should the list fall into the wrong hands.

No allowance for the rest of the month. Twelve crown and an assortment of lint in his pocket. How was he going to buy Luca? Never mind buying him – at the Harlequin's rates, how was Robert even going to pay for another appointment after today?

_**Rob a bank**_ , Robert wrote. He made a sketch of a man with a long nose brandishing a pistol at a bank teller. After consideration, he added a constable about to hit the long-nosed man with a truncheon. No, crime was not the answer. With his luck, he would cock it up and find himself in Hastey Gaol with all the other common thugs. Then Grandfather would have to put on his hat, get in his carriage, and drive all the way to Charter Square to bail him out. The thought of what Grandfather would have to say on that occasion made Robert feel ill. He'd rather hang.

So robbing a bank was out. Robert chewed his pen and pondered. Then he wrote:  _ **Sell Regalia**_ **.** The pendant was pure gold, after all, and set with rubies that would make even the most discriminating High Street jeweler weep. Of course, if he actually  _took_ the damn thing to a High Street jeweler none of them would buy it. You'd have to be mad to fence the D'Argent regalia. Whatever you'd get for the gold and rubies wasn't worth having your eyes and tongue removed, the penalty for tampering with the crest of a noble House. And you could be sure Grandfather would see it enforced.

Robert put an  _ **X**_ through  _ **Sell Regalia**_.

He thought for a moment and wrote:  _ **Borrow**_.

But from whom?

Val was at College on scholarship. He rarely talked about his family, but what little he let slip gave Robert a clear picture of too many children and not enough money. Val's father had visited once, a stooped and haggard man with the most exhausted eyes Robert had ever seen. Val made what little coin he had tutoring the Proctor's sons, and most of that he sent home. If it wasn't for the free (if foul) meals provided by the College, Robert suspected that Val would have starved.

Hugo, on the other hand, came from a newly moneyed family with a sprawling palazzo in the Commerce District. He was almost as rich as Adrian, though not as well-born. Hugo and his father were locked in an epic, ongoing battle involving threats of mutual disinheritance, rows that had to be broken up by Hugo's husky sisters, the exchange of inflammatory letters, and, on one memorable occasion, a duel. Hugo was constantly complaining that his allowance had been suspended after the latest eruption of filial animus.

As for Barnabas, he was of a clan of cheerfully provincial bumpkins who had somehow stumbled into a minor noble title. He always spent most of his allowance at the Buttery, and the rest was lavished on round after round of drinks for his friends (Robert, admittedly, among them) at the student tavern.

Adrian — No.

Robert drummed his pen against the desk. Who else? Well, Francis, obviously. Any attempt by Uncle Bernard to reign in his son's profligate spending was undermined by his wife, Grandfather's sister Cecile. Aunt Cecile was a formidable shrew, and Francis was the apple of her eye. He came away from every family visit with a heavy purse and a smirk of satisfaction.

Of course, the idea of being in debt to Francis was only slightly preferable to ritual castration. He would definitely be the very last of last resorts.

From the fact that Professor Farley had stopped talking and the students began to rustle to their feet, Robert perceived that class was over. He folded the paper and shoved it into his jacket pocket, then winced, realizing that the ink was still wet. Oh well. Another challenge for the College laundresses.

The corridors of Auffrye Hall wound like a snails' shell around the Auffrye Library, a five-story repository of every major text on law and legal ethics ever published in Lyonesse. The librarians had cleverly arranged things so that the most popular books were mustered on the ground floor, with content becoming increasingly esoteric as one climbed higher. This no doubt saved a lot of trips up and down the stairs to re-shelve displaced volumes; the residents of the fifth floor rarely left their bookcases. The entire level was all but deserted, save for a few intrepid souls, like Robert, whose research took them beyond the scope of the first floor.

Through a dusty, unpopulated reading room and up five rickety stairs was the door to Professor Gregory's office, propped ajar by an umbrella stand. Steady muttering could be heard from within. Robert lifted the heavy brass knocker and let it fall.

“Enter!” Professor Gregory shouted.

Robert entered.

The room was in an even worse state of disarray than usual. Books stood in precarious stacks as high as Robert's waist, and stray pages fluttered in the draft like moths. The floor was scattered with greasy newspaper, the detritus of a months' worth of fish and chip dinners. The shabby wallpaper was peeling in strips, and the air was thick with the smell of moldering pages and the professor's lavender-eucalyptus cough drops.

“Ah,” said Professor Gregory, looking up from his pile of essays in order to glower at Robert over the rims of his spectacles. “Young Lord D'Argent, come to visit the poor old tutor in his dusty tomb. And how may I be of use to you this morning?”

Robert flourished the sheaf of parchment he'd completed last night. “Dearest of dons,” he said, “your pages.”

Professor Gregory snatched the parchment between two long fingers. He flicked his spectacles to the tip of his nose and squinted at Robert's smudged, spidery handwriting.

“I see your penmanship is as execrable as ever, Robert. What does this say here? The Quorum ought to reconsider its reliance on Erminian legal  _elephants?_  Oh, legal  _precedents._  Yes, I doubt even the most eccentric members of the Quorum would put their faith in juridical pachyderms. Hm. Well, it's an audacious notion, though perhaps rather over the heads of our usual readers.” Professor Gregory sniffed. “Well, it will do. Late as it is.”

“I live to serve,” replied Robert without thinking. Luca's practiced words rang in his ears:  _How may this slave serve your pleasure?_ Robert ran a shaky hand over his forehead, trying to banish the image of Luca kneeling, robe open, eyes empty, waiting to be raped again.  _I can be whoever my lord wishes me to be..._

Professor Gregory was staring at him. Robert realized that the man had spoken and was awaiting a response.

“Come again?”

“I asked,” said Professor Gregory, with exaggerated patience, “whether you have the afternoon free? There are matters that bear discussing, and I have certain associates who are eager to make your acquaintance.”

Ah, more intrigue. Robert had even less interest in the old man's machinations than he usually did.

“Afraid not. I have an appointment.” Robert checked his wristwatch. “In an hour, in fact. I must cut our meeting short. So sorry. Deepest regrets. A fond farewell.”

“But—”

Before Professor Gregory could object, Robert backed out the door and let it close with a dusty thud behind him. He lingered a moment, listening for the muffled expletive. When it came he chuckled to himself, then turned and hurried downstairs before the old man could muster up the initiative to come after him.

Outside, the day proved as sunny as Robert's mood. He paused for a moment in front of the Statue of the Founder (still, he noted, missing the nose that he and Hugo had broken off) and turned his face up to the clear blue sky. When Luca was his—and here he allowed himself a moment of giddy delight at the idea—when Luca was his they would picnic in weather like this on the old stone baluster overlooking the harbor. Luca would rest his head on Robert's lap, and Robert would stroke his hair, and they would talk until the sun came down over the water and the ships were silhouettes against the rose-gold sky.

“I say! D'Argent!”

Robert's reverie was broken by the sight of a jolly-faced giant striding towards him. Lord Grosvenor, last seen passed out in front of a brothel the morning after Bacchanal, was one of the few men at Court or College who was taller than Robert. The man was built along the same broad lines as a carthorse.

“I've been on the hunt for you, old boy!” Grossie thundered, clapping Robert's arm with enough force to make him stagger. “Hero of the bloody age, eh? I dread to think what would have become of this sad chap without your good works. No doubt I would have frozen blind! Or worse, had to walk back to College with my head bowed in shame.”

“Gods forbid,” said Robert. “That's no fate for a man of your stature, Grossie.”

The pun was bad, but Grossie roared with laughter nonetheless. He dealt Robert another brotherly knock to the shoulder.

“The famous D'Argent wit, eh?” Grossie tapped his nose. “Well, it would appear that I'm in your debt, old boy! One good turn deserves another and all that. Should you ever need a favor, just give a shout and I'll be at your side quick as a whippet. How does that sound?”

“Oh, you needn't—” Robert began. Then he stopped. “Actually, Grossie,” he said slowly, “as it happens I seem to have gotten myself into a bit of a tight corner. Financially, you know. The thing of it is, my allowance has been cut and, well, I can't exactly ask Grandfather for a loan, if you see what I mean.”

“Ah, say no more, Robert, say no more!” Grossie crowed. “You've been gambling, have you? Spades, Duece, Rumble, Top-Me-Off, Peaknuckle, Scrimgribbler! Eh?”

“Yes,” said Robert, who had no idea what Scrimgribbler was. “Gambling. That's right. I just can't stop myself.”

This time Robert had the foresight to brace himself for Grossie's affable whack to the arm. “No need to explain, old boy! I've been tumbled bum over tit by Lady Luck once or twice. Oh, I've been stung, licked, dusted off, blowed, blanked, bottomed out, clocked, jumped and drifted! I've been odds-down on a duck's martingale! And it doesn't bear counting the number of times I've found myself stripped to breeches and strapped for chip in a corner. Eh?”

“Exactly,” said Robert. He tried not to imagine Grossie being blowed and stripped to breeches.

“Well, I'd be more than glad to help out a fellow plunger,” said Grossie. “How much do you need?”

Robert quickly calculated how much another appointment with Luca would cost, then, to be safe, tripled it. He named the sum.

Grossie's eyes widened. “Good gods, man! You're really an ear down, aren't you?”

“Like you wouldn't believe,” Robert said.

“Normally I'd tell you to go whistle,” said Grossie, “but you did save the old Grosvenor dignity the other morning. All right, D'Argent. Debts must be discharged and all that!”

Grossie gave Robert a final wallop to the arm. This time Robert was not prepared. He was knocked flat, landing on back with his cloak around his ears. Grossie's face loomed over him, wide with concern.

“Are you all right, old boy?”

“I've never felt better,” said Robert, and it was true.

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

Lyonesse was still in a state of convalescence after Bacchanal. Bedraggled streamers hung from lampposts; broken bottles winked in the noonday sun. Street-cleaners crept along the boulevards, sweeping spangled litter into the gutter. Robert passed two dogs wrestling over a spent firecracker.

Robert took a detour that sent him around outer edge of the Commerce District, where vendors gathered in the open courtyards to hawk their wares over the plash of public fountains. Robert found the bookseller without trouble (the cart was, as usual, not overly disturbed by an abundance of customers), and after much deliberation he settled on a new comedy by a popular author. Slight stuff, but Luca would surely appreciate the distraction. Then, thinking of Luca's thin arms, his hollow cheeks and painfully protrusive ribs, Robert bought a fat penny-cake frosted with chocolate. Armed with presents, he squared his shoulders and marched into Paradiso.

Robert had never been in the pleasure district before nightfall before. He was shocked to find it bustling with activity. Whores, male and female, free and slave, leaned out of brothel windows, shrilling enticements to passerbys. Men with their hats pulled low dawdled in doorways, shifty-eyed, scanning the street for a pretty face, a cheap fuck. Courtesans lounged on patios, fluttering their fans and giggling at nothing. Robert thought of Maman sprawled glassy-eyed on her dressing room couch, burbling with laughter as a customer lifted her skirts. These women had the same pocked skin and dreamy smiles. Robert averted his gaze and hurried on.

A withered old doxy stood on the corner, breasts cupped in her palms. When Robert went by, she dropped one saggy tit to snatch at his sleeve.

“A crown, m'lord—”

Robert shook her off. He was shocked at the intensity of his disgust.

“Fairy!” she shrieked after him.

Robert tried not to see the children, crouched beside pimps or walking along the avenue. He tried not to see Luca in their faces, at once too young and far, far too old. He kept his eyes fixed firmly ahead and did not see, did not see, did not see, all the way to the Harlequin.

The tough from the other morning stood sentinel at the great gilded doors. When he saw Robert he ducked his head, though not low enough to hide his sneer.

“Welcome back, my lord,” said the tough. “You got an appointment?”

Robert presented the calling card Boq had given him, stamped with a harlequin diamond. The date and hour were written in a shaky flourish of purple ink.

The tough took his sweet time examining the card. Finally he shrugged in assent and shouldered open the door.

“Hope you enjoy him,” said the tough. “My lord.”

Robert was met in the foyer by a boy who wore nothing but bangles and a collar. The boy didn't speak. He led Robert silently through dim corridors. When they passed other clients led by other whores, Robert pretended to be very interested in a painting or a painted vase — anything to avoid looking too closely at the men. Afraid, perhaps, that he might see too much of himself in their faces, as he had seen too much of Luca in those of the child streetwalkers.

The boy led Robert up the flight of stairs that led to the tower where he had visited Luca yesterday. Then the walls of the waiting-parlor had been upholstered in blue velvet; today they were swathed in gold. Robert checked to make sure the book was tucked into his vest, the penny-cake safe in his coat pocket. He scrubbed a hand over his face, then smoothed back his hair. He wished the parlor had a mirror.

_Careful,_ Robert told himself.  _You're getting as vain as Francis_. The thought galled him into pulling the bell. Immediately the answering toll sounded. Robert opened the door and entered.

And there was Luca. He knelt on the bed, as he had yesterday, arms folded behind his back, thighs spread, expression carefully blank—only now, seeing Robert, Luca's face lit with joy. For a moment neither of them spoke. They simply stared. Then Robert let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and Luca made a noise, and they were both scrambling across the room to meet each other.

“Did you miss me?” Robert asked, stupidly.

“Yes,” said Luca, voice muffled against Robert's chest.

Robert tipped Luca's face up. Luca parted his lips, expectant, and Robert took the invitation to lean down and kiss him.

“I missed you too,” Robert murmured, running a thumb over Luca's chin.

Luca went pink-cheeked and ducked his head. “May I take your coat?” he asked, almost shyly.

Robert nodded and Luca began to unbutton him, starting at his collar. As his fingers moved down, Robert became aware of an unforeseen problem: Luca's hands on his body, the smell of his hair, the flush of pink across his chest, all contrived to cause an increasingly obvious bulge in Robert's breeches.  _Damn._ Robert shifted uncomfortably and hoped Luca wouldn't notice.

No such luck. When Luca reached the buttons over Robert's groin he paused. His hand lingered, cupping the outline of Robert's erection. A brush of his fingertips across the straining placket nearly had Robert coming in his breeches.

“Uhn – ah, here, let me,” Robert said quickly, pushing Luca away. He turned awkwardly to hide his hard-on, fumbled his coat open and dumped it unceremoniously on a divan. He had a moment's confusion upon hearing the crunch of wax paper, then remembered, belatedly, the penny-cake in his coat pocket.

“Damn,” said Robert, pulling out the rather squashed cake. “This was supposed to be a gift.”

“Oh,” said Luca in a small voice. He gazed at the cake with an expression of such desperate longing that Robert was afraid he might fall upon it like a wolf.

“It's for you,” said Robert, in case it wasn't clear. “To eat.”

Luca looked faint. He licked his lips and reached out, slowly, cautiously, casting quick glances up at Robert through his lashes. He held the cake in his palm and probably would have been content to look at it all day had not Robert cleared his throat encouragingly. Luca closed his eyes and ran his tongue along a curl of chocolate frosting. He tested the crimped rim of the cake with his teeth; then, delicate as a mouse, took the first bite. His expression of pornographic bliss did nothing to diminish Robert's erection.

“Thank you,” Luca managed to say once he had swallowed. “Thank you. Thank you.  _Thank_ you...”

“Eat,” Robert ordered.

Luca obeyed. He devoured exactly one third of the cake in excruciatingly careful bites. Then he wrapped the remainder in wax paper and, to Robert's bemusement, trotted over to the bed and hid the packet underneath.

“One part for Ganymene's altar and one part for Asher,” Luca explained in response to Robert's questioning look. “My page.”

“The boy who fetched me backstage the other night?” Robert recalled scabby knees and a sulky expression. “He played a nymph, didn't he? I remember him as being rather uncooperative.”

“He's green,” said Luca, too quickly. “Debt-bound. His father sold him to cover the money he owed over some bad loans.” Luca bit his lip and Robert winced, remembering the tang of copper from yesterday's kiss. “He wants to go home,” Luca said, almost to himself. Then he shook his head. “But he'll learn.”

“Like you did?” said Robert before he could stop himself.

“Asher isn't like me.” A proud, fretful smile. “Asher's brave. He fights. I never did.”

There was a moment of silence. Luca stared at the floor as he wound and unwound a braid around his wrist. Robert, watching, could not help but wonder how many men Luca had helped out of their coats and touched through their breeches. Would he have fought them, if he could?

Abruptly, as if banishing an unwelcome thought, Luca shook his head. “May I offer you a drink?” he asked, formal as a butler. “There is wine. I could call for food if it pleases you, sir – Robbie –  _Robert_.”

Robert cocked an eyebrow. Luca's hand flew to his mouth. He laughed weakly.

“I'm nervous,” he admitted. “Can you tell?”

“We must endeavor to make you more comfortable,” said Robert. He threw himself onto an overstuffed couch and kicked his legs over the hassock. “You can start by sitting down. Here. Next to me.”

Luca, giggling, jumped up next to Robert and threw his arms around his neck. There was a smudge of chocolate frosting at the corner of his mouth; Robert thoroughly enjoyed licking it away. Luca sighed happily, fingers tangling in Robert's hair.

“You taste like sugar,” Robert mumbled against the curve of Luca's cheek.

“You smell like smoke,” Luca retorted.

Robert laughed. “It's a filthy habit, I know. Kissing me is about as wholesome as snogging an ashtray.”

“No, I like it. I like everything about you.” Luca hesitated. Then he said quietly, “Master says you paid the protection fee.”

Robert touched one of the healing suck-marks on Luca's throat. “Of course I did,” he said. The words came out fiercer than he meant them to. “I won't have you hurt.”

“I'm so grateful, Robert. For all of it.” Luca's hand moved from his hair to his chest, then down to stroke his thigh. The touch was so light it almost didn't register. It took Robert a moment to realize he was hard again.

“I would show you,” Luca said softly.

Robert was struck at once with two conflicting impulses. The first, to rip away the scrap of silk around Luca's hips and ravish him senseless; the second, to bury his head in his hands and groan. Gods, what had he done except bring Luca a little food and treat him like a human being? Certainly not enough to merit the worship in his eyes. But Luca felt so good against him, palm sliding up his leg as a hot mouth brushed across his neck, and Robert wanted him urgently, achingly. He took a shuddering breath and tried to clear his head enough to disentangle ethics from desire. It was far more difficult with Luca's hand on his crotch than it was in Professor Gregory's philosophy class.

Then Luca pressed his lips to Robert's ear and murmured, “Please, sir. Use me.”

Shock hit Robert like a bucket of ice-water.  _Use me_. An image flashed through his mind: Luca spread open under the beast from the satyr play, sobbing as that monstrous cock slammed into him again and again. Only now the beast's hands were Robert's hands, his cock was Robert's cock, and he wore Robert's face, rabid with pleasure.

Bile rose in Robert's throat. He leaped to his feet.

“I almost forgot! I brought a book for you. Here.” Robert snatched the book from his vest and shoved it at Luca. “It's a comedy. Very funny. Well, I assume. I haven't actually read it. Perhaps I could borrow it once you're done.”

Luca's eyes went wide. He looked from Robert to the book, the book back to Robert.

“Oh,” Luca whispered. He sounded as though he might cry.

“I don't suppose you're able to visit the bookseller's all that often,” said Robert lamely.

Luca shook his head. His chin was trembling. He touched the book with such reverence, he might have held a golden idol and not a cheap little folio bought from a shabby cart in the Commerce District.

“I don't deserve this,” Luca said in a voice so small Robert almost didn't hear. He took a deep breath. “Robert, I have to tell you something. My master asked about you.” The words came pouring out of him in a rush. “There are people he answers to – maybe they pay him, I don't know. His  _contacts_ , he calls them. I think they're important. I – Robert, I think he might be afraid of them. They want to know about your friends, and your lovers, and —” He broke off and searched Robert's face, desperate. “ _Please_  don't be angry! I didn't tell him anything important, swear it!”

“I believe you,” Robert said. He ran a hand across his forehead, trying to make sense of what he'd just been told. Gregori Boq was acting as a cat's paw for some shadowy agents in unknown employ. And they were interested in Robert. Right. Well. That had implications he didn't even want to begin to think about. All he knew was that his life had just been made vastly more complicated, and he did not like it.

“He can't make me say anything,” said Luca earnestly. “I'll cut out my tongue, like an Occidental spy.”

Robert grinned despite himself. “And where did you learn about Occidental spies?”

“From a book,” Luca admitted.

Robert laughed, feeling an almost unbearable rush of affection. Even with all the years they'd lost Luca was still the same little boy who would curl up at the foot of Robert's bed with an encyclopedia that weighed as much as he did.

“What will happen if you tell your master nothing?” he asked.

Luca tried to hide his shudder in a shrug that did not quite succeed at nonchalance. “It doesn't matter.”

“It matters a great deal, actually,” said Robert.

Luca shrugged again and looked away. He caught his lip between his teeth and bit hard enough to make Robert flinch in sympathy.

“Don't, sweetheart,” Robert said, touching the corner of Luca's swollen mouth. “Please don't hurt yourself.”

Luca blinked, bewildered. He felt where he had bitten himself and looked surprised to see the bead of blood on his finger.

“A filthy habit,” Luca echoed. He hugged the book to his chest and blurted out, “I'll understand if you don't want to see me anymore.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” said Robert firmly. “You couldn't keep me away if you tried. Anyway, with all the trouble we've been through together I'd be rather disappointed if everything became easy for us all of a sudden. Now, listen. I think I know what you can tell your master…”

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

“He wants to join the  _Church_?”

Luca knelt on the floor of his master's office. Boq's expression of bewilderment had Luca biting the inside of his cheek so not to snort with laughter.

“Yes, master,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even. “It is my lord's fondest wish to devote himself to the gods.”

Master Boq opened and closed his mouth several times. “But – what of his grandfather's position on the Council?”

“My lord has no interest in politics,” said Luca. “He yearns for a life of reflection and chastity as one of the Silent Brotherhood.”

“Huh.” Boq rubbed his chin. “And his lovers? Friends?”

Luca shook his head. “Books only, master. He spends all his time in study.”

“I was under the impression that the man is something of a Lothario,” said Boq doubtfully.

“That's all behind him now,” said Luca. “My lord has taken up amateur botany. He spoke very passionately on the subject of, um, rare orchid cultivation,” he added in a burst of inspiration.

Boq leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers his gut. “Well, well! My contacts will be very interested to hear all this. You've done well, little bird.”

Luca pressed a kiss to master's foot. “My only thought is to obey.”

“That's my good boy,” said Boq. He nudged Luca's chin up with the toe of his slipper. “Now. Take off your clothes.”

Luca stood, letting the cloth fall from his hips. Master Boq grabbed his waist and yanked him forward. He slobbered his mouth over Luca's stomach and up his chest, lapping at his nipples like a dog at its bowl. A meaty hand shoved between Luca's legs and a finger wormed inside him to the knuckle. Master Boq had not bothered to remove his rings. Luca swallowed a whimper.

“It's Wednesday,” said Master Boq, raising his head from Luca's tit. “Or had you forgetten?”

“No, master,” Luca said quickly. He tried to ignore the sharp, cold rings scraping his passage. “I've been yearning for my master's touch.” He leaned down, lips brushing against Master Boq's ear. “I've been hungry for my master's cock.”

Master Boq exhaled in a hiss. “Slut,” he said approvingly.

“ _Your_  slut,” Luca said. “I'm your toy, your doll. Please take me.”

Master Boq pulled his finger out of Luca and brought it to Luca's mouth. Luca licked him clean without hesitation.

“Go prepare yourself,” said Boq. “You'll attend to me in my chamber.”

  
Luca worked quickly. He crouched over a basin of chilly water and flushed himself out before stretching his anus with two oiled fingers. The lavender scent was gone, but Luca still had a bottle of spicy perfume that made his nose itch and his eyes water. He dabbed the perfume behind his ears and over his shaved pubis, swallowing sneezes. Master Boq liked to hear the jangle of jewelry as a boy moved on top of him; Luca draped himself in necklaces and bangles and hung rhinestones from his ears. He smudged kohl around his eyes and carmine across his lips. Then he turned to look in the mirror.

Immediately he wanted to look away. He forced himself to stare level at the glass. Gaudy yellow hair and maggot-pale skin and eyes too big for his face, like an insect's.  _Ugly_ , Luca told himself.  _Old._

And a new word came to mind: Pathetic. Offering himself to Robert like that, as though he were a thing worth having. Small wonder Robert had pushed him away. He had been so patient with Luca, so kind, and Luca had repaid his mercy by all but forcing his hand down Robert's breeches. So  _stupid_! Stupid whore, to think a man like Robert would degrade himself by taking what half the men in Lyonesse had already used. After all, Robert had seen him on stage. He knew what Luca was. Robert felt pity, maybe, some quaint, lingering affection. He couldn't despise Luca utterly, he still liked to kiss him after all; no doubt it amused him to see Luca so eager for it. Perhaps Robert wanted to keep him as a sort of pet.

Tears stung Luca's eyes. He blinked them away. Mustn't spoil his makeup.

Anyway, he told himself firmly, he should be thankful Robert tolerated him for any reason – wretched, foul thing that he was. If Robert wanted a pet then Luca would lick his hand and wag his tail and never, ever forget how lucky he was. It wouldn't be so bad, to be Robert's pet.  Luca allowed himself to imagine it: afternoons spent on Robert's lap, eating real food and reading books he didn't have to fuck the overseer for. It would be wonderful.

Luca shook himself. It did no good to think like this. His master was waiting.

  
Master Boq's chamber was the largest room in the Harlequin. With the walls upholstered in plummy velvet and the high domed ceiling adorned with a fresco of angels, it looked more like a temple than a bedroom. Master Boq lounged on an oversized bed blanketed in wine-colored silks. He wore a yellow robe that didn't close over his belly. An opera warbled softly from the gramophone; Boq moved his glass in time to the music, as though conducting an unseen orchestra.

“Very nice,” said Master Boq when Luca entered. “What a sight you are, my dear!”

Luca preened in the way his master liked, running his hands over his body, between his legs, and pouting his lips in a smile. Master Boq opened his robe, pushing aside the overhang of paunch to reveal his thickening penis.

“I want your mouth, boy,” Master Boq said, voice husky with arousal.

Luca climbed up onto the bed. So soft! It made the bed in High Parlor feel like a straw-stuffed pallet by compare. Luca crawled across the cushioned expanse, careful to keep his body lower than his master's. When he reached Master Boq's feet he kissed them; then, trying not to shudder, he sucked each pungent toe until his master sighed with pleasure. Luca kissed his way up Master Boq's thighs, kneading and stroking the dimpled flesh. By the time he reached his master's cock it was fully erect.

Luca took the crown between his lips, running his tongue along the veined ridge. He relaxed his throat and sucked his master's cock in deep, until his nose and forehead were pressed against Boq's lower belly. A hand clamped on the back of Luca's neck, trying to force him down. The bulk of fat prevented it. Even suffocating as Luca was, he could go no further. He told himself not to panic, chest convulsing for want of oxygen.

“Lazy bitch,” Master Boq muttered. But the hand withdrew.

Luca could breathe through his nose now. He tried to suck eagerly, caressing the shaft with his tongue and the wet ring of his lips. He rolled his master's balls in his palm; then, encouraged by Boq's hiss of pleasure, took each hairy bollock into his mouth. Master Boq's thighs squeezed tight around his ears, trapping him there with his face buried in the man's sweaty crotch.

After a small eternity Boq relaxed his legs. Luca bobbed up, lapping beads of precum from the fold of his master's foreskin. Master Boq pulled him back by the hair.

“I'll have your ass now.”

Luca sat up on his haunches. He threw a leg over Master Boq's thigh, half-straddling him; then, at Master Boq's direction, turned so that his back was to his master. He took the spit-wet cock in hand and angled his hips so that the head entered him easily. He sank down, tightening his anus around the shaft as it slid inside. When he was speared completely Luca leaned forward, palms against the bed for leverage. He began to move, shallowly at first, then picking up the pace as Master Boq urged him faster, faster.

Luca preferred it when the men used him like this. They couldn't thrust into him at the wrong, bruising angles that the Beast favored, and best of all, Luca didn't have to look at them. It was a relief to let his face empty of expression. Luca fucked himself on his master's cock and thought of Robert's book. A comedy, Robert said. Luca didn't think he'd ever read a comedy before. What if he didn't know when to laugh? He would have to read very carefully so that he could give Robert's gift the appreciation it deserved.

Master Boq growled a curse, fingers tightening around Luca's waist. Close, then. Luca arched his back and clenched around the cock inside him. He reached back to stroke the tight sac of his master's balls. That was all it took. Master Boq bucked his hips and came with a wail not unlike the castrato singing on the gramophone.

Luca held position until Master Boq smacked his buttock. He summoned a smile before turning to face his master. Boq lay sprawled, panting as though he had ridden Luca like a stallion and not simply lounged on the soft bed while his slave did all the work. Instead of the appropriate feelings of gratitude and humility, Luca found himself gritting his teeth against a twinge of...resentment?

No, that couldn't be right. He was glad to be used. He was glad. He  _was_.

Of course, a demonstration was required. Luca knelt over Master Boq and let his hair sweep across the man's sticky groin.

“Did your slave please you, master?” Luca purred.

Master Boq chuckled. He caught a handful of Luca's curls and pulled him closer. “Oh yes, pretty one,” he said throatily. “Sweet barbarian whore.”

Luca ran his fingers through the matted fur on Master Boq's chest, laying a kiss on each nipple. Boq hummed tunelessly. His hand quested down to grope between Luca's leg, and he smirked in satisfaction when he felt the dribble of fresh cum between Luca's asscheeks.

“Do you suck the lord as well as you do me?” he asked Luca conversationally.

A trick question. “It is for my master to judge my skill,” said Luca.

“Good boy,” Master Boq chuckled. “Alas, it will be a good while before his lordship can enjoy your mouth again. He was dreadfully eager to return to your bed—Immediately or sooner, he told me.”  Boq winked, impish. “Of course I could not book him for another three days.”

“So long,” said Luca without thinking.

“I plan to heighten his anticipation. Like a fisherman with a choice piece of of bait on his hook.” Boq pushed a finger into Luca's hole and crooked it, mimed tugging on a line.

“My master is so clever,” Luca whispered. He thought of three days without Robert and wanted to cry.

“The Councilor has offered me a small fortune for you,” said Boq, idly thrusting his finger in and out. “But young Lord d'Argent's purse must be nearly bottomless. His grandfather is one of the wealthiest men in the Isles, and the boy is quite zealous for your purchase. I do believe he is smitten.”

Master Boq grinned mockingly, inviting Luca to share in his gloating. Luca forced himself to smile. The corners of his mouth felt as though they would crack.

“By the time I'm ready to sell he'll be begging to pay any price I name.” Master Boq worked a second finger into Luca. “In the meantime you'll keep the Councilor interested. A bidding war requires two parties, after all.”

Luca's stomach lurched. “I – I'm sorry master, I'm so terribly stupid, but I thought – I thought my lord had paid the protection fee?”

“Well, they won't be allowed to  _mark_ you, of course,” said Master Boq, as though it were obvious. “The Councilor has assured me that there are many ways he and his slave can take their pleasure without leaving a trace. What Lord d'Argent doesn't know won't hurt him.” Boq scissored his fingers inside Luca. “Isn't that right?”

Luca cast his eyes down and nodded.

“Then again,” Master Boq continued, “I can always give your appointments with the Councilor to that surly page of yours—”

“Oh, don't!” Luca blurted out. “I'll please the Councilor, I'll be good, I swear it!”

Master Boq smiled indulgently. “Of course you will,” he said, pulling his fingers out. He shoved Luca's head down towards his prick. “Now suck me.”

 


	17. Chapter 17

A bead of sweat ran down Robert's forehead. His arm and thighs trembled with fatigue, but he held the épée perfectly level. He moved through the exercise with the precision of an automaton, one gesture flowing seamlessly into the next. His shuffling footsteps echoed through the empty gymnasium. It was the dinner hour and the other fencers had taken the excuse to clear out—with some relief, Robert suspected. No doubt seeing scholarly Robert d'Argent with his teeth bared in a grim rictus of concentration as he attacked the practice dummy again and again had made them rather uncomfortable. Certainly nobody had offered to spar with him. It was probably for the best. In this mood, Robert rather feared he might have killed them.

_Damn_  Boq! How dare he yank Robert around like this, as though he were a cur on a leash! It had only been a day since Robert had last seen Luca and already the absence was an ache, urgent, unbearable. He needed to press Luca to him, smell his hair, kiss his mouth. He needed to hear Luca laugh that soft, startled laugh, as though he'd forgotten he could laugh until Robert came and reminded him. He needed to give Luca books and feed him cake and tell him every little thought that passed through his mind, however insignificant, because it felt wrong somehow to have any part of himself that he didn't share. Robert needed Luca more than he had ever needed anything in his life—and  _damn_  Boq for knowing it!

Robert lunged, striking the practice dummy in the center of its chest. He imagined Boq's heart speared on the tip of his sword. Sadly, the image didn't make him feel any better than it had the last hundred times it had come to mind.

A light patter of applause broke out from the other side of the gymnasium. Robert turned so quickly he almost lost his balance. The light glinted off a pair of spectacles as round as silver coins

“Tolliver?” said Robert.

The butler bowed at the waist. “My lord has sent me to collect you, sir.”

“Collect...?” Robert's memory stirred

Of course. The King's Hunt Ball. Everyone at Court had been buzzing about it for months. Robert had been prepared to fight his way out of an invitation tooth and nail, but to his surprise Grandfather never raised the subject. Now Robert realized this was the old man's play all along: to wait for the evening of the Ball before ambushing Robert with a summons.

“What's his leverage?” Robert asked tiredly.

Tolliver's serene expression did not budge an inch. “Leverage, sir?”

“Surely my esteemed grandfather didn't send you all the way to College Square without a carrot to dangle in front of my nose,” Robert snapped. “Or, failing that, a stick.”

“I am afraid I don't quite catch sir's meaning,” said Tolliver politely.

It was then that Robert noticed the long, thin wooden box Tolliver carried. Robert was so accustomed to seeing Tolliver with a tray that he hadn't realized the man was holding anything out of the ordinary.

“Carrot or stick?” Robert said warily.

“I'm afraid it is neither, sir.” Tolliver unlatched the box. “It is, in fact, a new fencing épée. Lord d'Argent was quite distressed to think that sir might be seen in public with an inferior model.”

“No, that would never do,” said Robert. Still, he couldn't help noticing that the épée was quite dashingly made. The blade cut a perfect V, and the blued bell-guard was etched with Robert's initials

“I see that sir is displeased,” said Tolliver. “I shall convey sir's regrets to my lord.” He began to close the box.

“Hang on a minute!” Robert jumped forward. “I – ah, perhaps I'll just have a look, shall I?”

Tolliver lifted the lid once more. Carefully, Robert lifted the épée from its cushion. He tested the weight between his gloved hands. As expected, it was exquisitely balanced.

“Iberian steel,” Robert murmured. “Beautiful work."

He took his stance and made an experimental lunge. The sword cut the air like silk.

“That,” Robert admitted, “is a very nice carrot.”  
  
  
Grandfather, shrewd bugger that he was, had sent a set of formal clothes for Robert to change into after his hasty shower in the gym's bathhouse. Tolliver and the bath attendant helped him into a black doublet with paned sleeves and a high, stiff collar that made Robert's ears itch. His breeches were replaced with hose, and his comfortable boots with heeled buckle-shoes that were almost as stiff as the collar. Robert drew the line at the hat Tolliver proffered. Nobody could wear anything that befeathered without their head being mistaken for a chicken.

The Summer Palace sprawled across the twilit horizon like calligraphy done in shades of gold and white smoke. The carriage rattled down an avenue bowered by lime trees before crossing the palace bridge. The way was banked with slaves at stiff attention, each holding up a colored lantern. The carriage passed under the raised portullis and entered an inner courtyard.

Robert realized then that he was rather past fashionably late. The other guests' coaches stood on blocks, their passengers long since disgorged into the palace. A collection of footmen in royal livery crouched over a covered barrel, throwing dice. When they saw Robert they leaped to their feet, hastily straightening their wigs. They bowed with exaggerated deference as they helped him from the carriage, no doubt in the hope he would not make complaint about their laziness. Peacocks milled shrieking underfoot; Robert narrowly avoided stepping in a chalky streak of excrement.

Inside, the ballroom was all color and noise and the whinny of the orchestra. Only Tolliver's hand on Robert's arm kept him from bolting. A servant offered a tray and Robert gladly took a glass of punch. The punch was entirely too sweet and there was entirely too little of it. He finished the glass in a gulp and took a second.

“If sir will accompany me,” said Tolliver, tone ever so slightly admonishing.

Robert followed the narrow black triangle of Tolliver's back, taking furtive sips of punch as they moved through the crowd. He saw Francis, who was, as always holding his own private party with the loveliest young men of Court. Francis made some witty remark and his admirers laughed like the King's hyenas. Robert recognized Adrian among their number, rakish in a green leather doublet. Robert ducked his head and hunkered down awkwardly behind Tolliver.

“My heir appears to be under the impression that he is stalking pheasant in the bush,” said Grandfather's dry voice.

Robert straightened guiltily. Grandfather was outfitted in a more festive version of his usual charcoal-colored suit, 'festive' in this case meaning that his garters were tied with red ribbon instead of black. The man who stood beside him was similarly attired, though his lace cuffs and broad-brimmed hat made a better show of gaiety.

“You remember Lord Fontaine, my son,” said Grandfather pointedly.

“Of course,” said Robert, who didn't. He sketched a bow. “An honor.”

“Better say a surprise,” said Lord Fontaine. His voice was as grave and joyless as a judge's. “It's well known that Robert d'Argent is the most elusive of all the young lords at Court. I daresay you're becoming rather famous for it.”

Robert was horrified at the thought of being famous for any reason, but kept his expression neutral

“I'm kept thoroughly occupied by my work at College,” he said. When Grandfather scowled, he added quickly, “Much to my disappointment. Alas.”

A woman materialized at Lord Fontaine's elbow. She was around Robert's age, petite and raven-haired, and from what little Robert knew of fashion he could tell that she was impeccably dressed. She swept her skirts in a curtsy.

“May I present my daughter Estelle,” said Lord Fontaine. He spoke with obvious pride, though the girl was far from beautiful. “Are you enjoying the ball, my dear?”

Estelle gave a coy sigh and fluttered her fan. “A strange misfortune has befallen us, my lord,” she said. “There is quite an excess of ladies who wish to dance, and the gentlemen are hard pressed to keep up with the demand. I fear before the night is over the men will all be nursing blisters and the women will be forced to dance with each other.”

“That will never do,” said Grandfather. He turned to Robert. “My heir will, of course, be delighted to fulfill his duty to the ladies of Court.”

“I'm a terrible dancer,” Robert told Estelle. “Really. I'll step on your feet.”

“ _Robert_ ,” Grandfather ground out.

Estelle smiled beatifically. “I shall take it as an opportunity to improve my footwork.”  
  
Robert hadn't been lying; he truly was hopeless on the dance floor. His ballroom master had despaired of him years ago. Estelle, in contrast, moved with grace and assurance, nimbly avoiding his clumsy footfalls. Robert was not used to holding a woman in his arms, and he couldn't help comparing her to Luca. Estelle's hair was coarse while Luca's was soft; her complexion rough while his was smooth. Her lips were colorless and thin in contrast to Luca's lush red mouth. The pressure of her hand on Robert's arm failed to excite anything in him except faint annoyance. And her body—

Well. She was nothing like Luca.

“Had you arrived an hour earlier, you might have enjoyed the most marvelous entertainment,” said Estelle conversationally. “A dwarf was armed with a butter knife and set against His Majesty's pet gladiator. The swarthy barbarian was no more bothered by the little thing than an ox by a gadfly, but he was an excellent sport and let it exhaust itself with feint after feint. What a howling show! Finally he cracked the dwarf's head between his hands as though it were an egg and spilled its brains upon the floor.”

She laughed, a high, crystalline sound that made Robert wince

“I suppose you share Lord d'Argent's distaste for the Games?” said Estelle, tilting her head.

“I don't share his moral disapproval,” Robert said. “I – well, I'm a swordsman. Gladiatorial combat is...messy. There's no art to it. No style.”

“The young men of Court often stage fencing bouts to display their skills for His Majesty,” Estelle pointed out. “Why don't you join them?”

“I'm very busy,” said Robert shortly.

Estelle smiled—a reflex, Robert realized; her dark eyes were cold. He noticed that her teeth were very small and sharp, like a cat's. A blast of trumpets sounded through the ballroom. The orchestra began to play the King's March, every note as bombastic as Robert remembered. The ballroom doors were flung open, and King Eustace made his entrance.

He rode a chariot wrought of gold, winged like a god's foot and drawn by a brace of slaves. The slaves were painted like horses, dappled and chestnut and roan. They strained against traces of iron chain braided with silk. King Eustace himself was costumed as Chernon the Hunter. He wore an antlered helm, the prongs woven with living ivy and oak leaves; his armor was buckskin, and a false beard hung in a plait to his waist. He held a spear in one hand and a whip in the other

King Eustace flexed his wrist and the whip cracked about the ears of the horse-slaves. They leaned into their traces, bearing the carriage forward. The crowd parted, a line of noble heads ducking as King Eustace passed them. Robert bowed deeply, brow almost knocking his knees. Beside him Estelle curtsied to the floor.

The chariot bore King Eustace to a curtained dais in the center of the ballroom. The curtains were drawn back to reveal a floating chamber. The throne sat on a carved block of marble; there was a monkey leashed to the it by a velvet collar. It ran gibbering over the throne, black eyes as bright as buttons. Its uncomfortably human hands made obscene gestures at its audience.

The horse-slaves prostrated themselves and King Eustace, spear aloft, marched over their bent backs and up the dais steps. He turned with a flourish and held up his hand. The doors through which he had made his entrance were flung open once again and a parade of servants entered, each bearing a hunting trophy. The assembly  _ooh_ 'd and  _ahh_ 'd appreciatively as whole stuffed game and mounted heads were carried to the dais and placed at the King's feet, like offerings at a shrine.

At last the final trophy was brought in: a living lion, led by a fool in motley. Robert recoiled with a hiss. His mind flashed to his father, gored by a rhinoceros in the King's menagerie. Death by exotic pet was hardly something he wanted to make a family tradition.

Fortunately the lion seemed tame. It padded sedately behind the fool, long pink tongue lolling from the corner of its mouth. When the fool passed by, Robert was struck to see tear tracks through his thick white makeup. Had he been friends with the dwarf felled by the gladiator, perhaps? Robert very much hoped that there would not be more blood shed tonight.

The lion was tethered to the dais, where it promptly flopped down on a rug and fell asleep. King Eustace struck a fine pose, one fist on his hip, the other extended in a gesture of triumph. His voice rang through the silent ballroom.

“I have conquered the beasts of the forest! I have defeated the beasts of the ocean! I have slain the beasts of the desert! I have laid low the beasts of the sky! Look upon my works and know that the right true king of Lyonesse is a mighty protector indeed!”

Applause broke like thunder through the crowd. If Robert had been on speaking terms with Adrian he might have murmured in his lover's ear that the elk's head was moth-eaten and the stuffed ostrich at least a decade old, judging by the dust on its feathers. But Adrian was giggling with Francis, and Robert, red-faced, kept his mouth shut and clapped until his palms were sore.

Robert recognized his opportunity to escape only after it had passed. Estelle seized his hands and they were off again, tripping across the floor like a two-headed blind man with three left feet. Robert was acutely aware of eyes on him. He imagined ladies sniggering behind their fans and gentlemen muffling laughter into monogrammed handkerchiefs. Somewhere among them was Grandfather, no doubt sighing with disappointment as he watched Robert make an ass of himself yet again. Robert swallowed humiliation and wished desperately for another glass of punch.

He was rescued from Estelle's vice grip by a tap on the shoulder. Tolliver stood with his hands folded officiously behind his back, flanked by two of the King's servants.

“I beg apology for interrupting sir and madame,” said Tolliver blandly. “It is my great honor to inform sir that he has been summoned to appear before His Majesty.”

 

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

 

The steps to the King's dais hadn't seemed that steep from the ground, but now, climbing them, Robert felt as though each riser was a mile high. He hoped that the last step would never come. It did, of course, and all too soon Robert found himself standing before the King of Lyonesse.

  
Robert went to one knee, right fist over his heart, left arm straight at his side. His deportment master must've made him practice this posture a thousand times, all in anticipation of this moment. Naturally, the deportment master had failed to warn Robert that he was going to feel like an utter fool. He wobbled on his knee and tried not to notice the way his hands were trembling.  
  
“You may rise,” intoned the King in his high, flutey voice.  
  
Robert stood, attempting a fluid gesture and probably failing. He stood on a marble floor strewn with wildflowers; green bunting was draped into a canopy above, and the pillars that bordered the circle were carved with scenes of the hunt. In the center of it all sat King Eustace on his golden throne.  
  
Robert had seen the King before, of course; had even been formally introduced during one of the interminable Court affairs Grandfather used to drag him to. Robert was sixteen and still more a boot-boy than a lord. He had blanked out most of the blessedly brief encounter, remembering only that the King made some comment about Robert's nose. Grandfather spun some story about a fencing accident. The next day a surgeon came to House d'Argent and hammered Robert's nose into shape with all the professional detachment of a sculptor molding stone.  
  
Now, seeing the King again, Robert's hand flew up of its own accord to touch his nose. Still straight, thank the gods.  
  
It was no wonder King Eustace had been so interested in the symmetry of Robert's face. His own was every inch as handsome as it had been four years ago. Though King Eustace must have been nearing forty he still looked little older than Robert, only his features were round and boyish where Robert's were stern and hawkish. The King's false beard was dyed to match his dark curls, and his buckskin armor showed his athletic figure to distinct advantage. His cheeks were ruddy with health. Even without the antlered helm, the King would have borne a striking resemblance to the god Chernon—though Chernon would probably have stood a full head taller. Eustace was almost as short as Luca.  
  
Robert realized that the King had been studying him as intently as he had been studying the King. The royal attendants, Grandfather among them, looked positively scandalized. Robert reddened and dropped his gaze.  
  
“The elusive Robert d'Argent, come to Court at last!” King Eustace clapped his hands. “How splendid!”  
  
Robert bowed. He couldn't think of anything else to do. The monkey chittered at him. The lion snored. Robert wanted very badly to go home.  
  
“Oh, come now.” The King's tone was suddenly annoyed. “You're being very dull, Robert d'Argent. I heard you were clever, yet there you stand bobbing like a servant.” His expression shifted like quicksilver, emotions rippling across his face faster than Robert could mark them. The King leaned forward and bellowed, “Speak! By order of your leige!”  
  
“I – I don't know what to say,” Robert squeaked, then quickly added, “Your Majesty.” He licked his lips. “Except perhaps to correct you on one point.”   
  
The attendants drew a breath of shock. King Eustace's expression became one of dangerous amusement. He gestured for Robert to continue.  
  
“When it comes to the wit of my family, I am afraid you have been misinformed, Majesty. I see no evidence of unusual cleverness in either Lord d'Argent or myself. I must conclude that upon seeing us malingering at the edge of a party, dressed all in black and scowling into the distance, Your Majesty's courtiers assume that we are contemplating the mysteries of the universe. In fact we are simply itching for a drink.”  
  
There was a long moment of silence. Then a delighted smile broke over King Eustace's face.   
  
“Oh! Oh!  _Too_  funny. I may die.” The King wagged his finger at Grandfather. “Tsk, tsk, Old Bob! I accuse you of keeping secrets from your liege. Here I thought you were aloof, when in reality you are a  _despicable_ lush!”  
  
“My grandson has quite the sense of humor, Majesty,” said Grandfather through gritted teeth.  
  
“I wish to be amused by him more often.” The King clapped his hands. “From now on, Robert d'Argent shall make regular attendance at Court!”  
  
It took an almost superhuman exertion of will for Robert not to run screaming from the ballroom. Instead he clenched his fists at his sides and sketched a bow.  
  
“As you wish, Majesty,” he forced himself to say. “I am—honored.”  
  
“Naturally,” said the King. Another quicksilver ripple, and his expression changed once more. He tipped back his head and howled, “deBorse!”  
  
Robert started dumbly. He couldn't keep up with the King's rapidly-changing mood. It wasn't until Grandfather snatched his sleeve and dragged him back into the rows of ranked attendants that Robert realized King Eustace had lost interest in him.  
  
A man with the face of a monster stepped out from behind the throne.   
  
As always, seeing Councilor deBorse made a shiver run down Robert's spine. It wasn't the man's appearance that caused his reaction, though that was certainly gruesome enough. deBorse had been pox-struck as a child. The disease went to his face, blistering away skin and muscle until what was left was barely recognizable as human. deBorse wore a false nose carved of ivory; an embroidered cap was pulled low over his scarred forehead. There was nothing whole left of his face except his eyes—and it was his eyes, not his face, that caused Robert to look away. They were a deep, clear blue, almost violet, and glittered with a ruthless, calculating intelligence that seemed to strip Robert bare. The Councilor was the one man in a Court of mannered vipers of whom Robert was stark terrified.  
  
“I am here, Your Majesty,” said deBorse, voice as polished as new metal. “What is your will?”   
  
“I'm  _bored_ ,” whined the King. He exaggerated a pout, drumming his heels against the throne's pedestal. “Have you a new entertainment for me?”  
  
“Naturally, Majesty. Allow me to retrieve it.”  
  
The Councilor gestured to a slave waiting below. The slave carried a covered tray up the steps and came to kneel before his master. Even at half height, the man must have been almost as tall as King Eustace. He was massive, broad and thew as oak with muscle. His collar was hung with a bell.  
  
Robert blinked. He could have sworn he'd seen the slave before. In fact, he almost—no, he looked  _exactly_ like the satyr from Bacchanal. Robert shook his head to dislodge the image of Luca crying out from under the beast's heaving bulk. No. The lights had been dim and Robert was drunk; his recollection was hardly trustworthy. It couldn't be the same man. It wasn't possible.   
  
Was it?  
  
The Satyr—no, the  _slave—_ presented the tray, eyes cast down. deBorse lifted the tray's cover to reveal a round wooden box carved like a globe. When he wound the crank on the side of the box a tune began to play, simple and sweet. The top of the box unfolded like a flower to reveal two miniature figures: a lion and a man with articulated metal limbs. The man wore the red and black mantle of Guy. The lion wore a crown.  
  
deBorse continued to wind the crank. Now the lion and man began to move, the lion snapping its jaws at the man, the man jabbing at the lion with a knife the size of a needle. The tune became a battle anthem. The lion and the man circled each other around and around the globe. The man jabbed, the lion snapped. Robert found he was holding his breath.   
  
Finally a mechanism clicked and the lion lunged. His jaws closed around the man's neck. The mechanism clicked again, and the lion bore the man to the ground.   
  
The music changed into melody that played at the beginning. The mechanism clicked; the lion and man snapped back into their original positions, and the battle began anew.  
  
King Eustace burst into applause. The attendants made noises of approval behind their gilded fans. Even Robert was impressed. He'd seen clockwork machines before, but nothing so elegant and complex.  
  
“Oh, give it to me, give it to me!” The King grabbed the music box like a child with a new toy. “You  _have_  pleased your liege, deBorse.”  
King Eustace turned the music box upside-down and shook it. deBorse winced at the resulting  _clunk_.  
  
“I am delighted that Your Majesty enjoys my little contrivances,” said deBorse.  
  
“Oh, immensely.”   
  
King Eustace wound the crank and watched the figures dance across the miniature stage. He giggled and wound the crank over and over again, each time more distracted. The lion and the man began to move jerkily, the tune run too fast. The monkey ran down the arm of the throne, screeching through its sharp little teeth. King Eustace yawned and gave the music box to the monkey.  
  
“Wine!” called the King, clapping his hands. “Where is the jester? I want to watch him juggle.”  
  
  
  
Robert suffered through his attendance on the King's dais for a subjective eternity that probably spanned only an hour on the clock. During that time the jester juggled oranges, gold coins, candlesticks, and, when King Eustace became particularly bored, knives. Nobles were summoned and dismissed, seemingly at random. The lion was fed a whole rare steak which the King proudly declared had been butchered from one of his own stallions.  
  
Robert had been sneaking punch every time a server passed with a tray. He was now at that stage of inebriation where he could barely stand upright. When King Eustace shouted for him, Robert almost fell over.  
  
“Here—here, Your Majesty!” Robert stumbled forward, bowing.  
  
“Robert d'Argent, I am told you are quite the scholar,” said King Eustace. He was shifting constantly, almost squirming with restless energy. His eyes darted across the room, not seeming to take anything in. “I would have attended College myself, had my station allowed.”  
  
“What a terrible loss for the academy, Majesty,” said Robert. He found it was a lot easier to be obsequious when drunk.  
  
“Your Majesty's enviable intellectual capacities are best bent to matters of state,” Grandfather put in smoothly. “You are the shepherd of your people, after all.”  
  
King Eustace brightened. “Sheep,” he said, “cannot herd themselves.”  
  
This observation was met with exclamations and applause from the attendants. A little bald man in livery leaped forward with a pen and parchment; he wrote down the King's words with a flourish, then disappeared again. Robert blinked. He wondered if he had begun to hallucinate.  
  
King Eustace sat up straight. His aspect transmuted from delighted to coolly removed faster than Robert could blink.  
  
“A student of College should not be out disporting themselves at this hour,” said the King, tone imperious. “You are dismissed from my presence.” He flapped his hand, waving Robert away like a bad smell.  
  
Robert almost fell over again, this time from a heady rush of relief. He bowed and began to back away.  
  
“Wait,” the King said suddenly. He caught the monkey's leash and dragged it shrieking into his lap. The music box was still clutched between its leathery paws. King Eustace wrestled the box away and held it out to Robert. “Here—a mark of my favor.”  
  
A sussurrus of astonished murmurs rose from the attendants. Robert did not look at Grandfather. He had never given the old man any reason to be pleased with him before, and now the moment had finally arrived Robert was afraid that he would see his Grandfather's expression completely unchanged.  
  
“I am honored, Your Majesty,” Robert said, taking the box with two shaking hands. The crank hung from its spring and the monkey had scored teeth-marks in the wood. Even broken the box was the most valuable thing Robert had ever possessed.   
  
“Of course you are,” said the King. Then he yawned. “Go away now. I'm done with you.”

 


	19. Chapter 19

*

“ _Are they done yet? Are they?”_  
  
 _Mama laughs as Luca jigs impatiently at her elbow. “Honeycake won't rise if you watch it.”_  
  
“ _Don't bother your mother,” says Papa. “Or the Goddess might send those cakes tumbling into the fire to teach you a lesson.”_  
  
 _Luca gasps. He squeezes his eyes shut and jumps backwards. “I'm not looking! I'm not bothering! I'm not—”_  
  
 _He trips. Luca shifts his weight so that the fall turns into a leap, landing with his foot extended and his arms arced above his head. He looks around guiltily to see if anyone noticed. His eyes meet Alek's._  
  
“ _Careful,” Alek mouths, jerking his head at Papa._  
  
 _Fortunately Papa is half-asleep in his chair. Luca puffs out his cheeks._ Phew _. If Papa caught him dancing in the house..._  
  
“ _It's been a long time since we had honeycakes on Vernal, Mama,” says Alek loudly._  
  
 _Papa's eyes fly open. He turns his snore into a grunt of disapproval. “That new commissar,” he mutters darkly. “Never trust a wolf who comes with sugar and honey.”_  
  
“ _At least he's letting us celebrate Vernal this year,” says Mama. “Remember the commissar when we were children, Jan? He had the overseers whip anyone who sang or wore flowers.”_  
  
 _Alek whistles. “Even Commissar Abbot wasn't_ that _bad.”_  
  
 _Mama and Papa exchange long, speaking looks. Mama reddens and drops her gaze._  
  
“ _Abbot was bad,” says Papa shortly._  
  
 _Luca remembers Commissar Abbot's men coming in the night to take Mama away. Sometimes they would keep her for days and days, and when they brought her back she would be limping and bruised and wouldn't speak to anyone, not even Papa. Then Papa would go out and pick a fight with an overseer, and he would be whipped, and afterward Big Yul and Uncle Ivan would have to carry the bloody mess of him home. Luca doesn't like to think about those times._  
  
“ _They're putting up a maypole in the square,” says Alek, breaking the silence. “Did you see? With ribbons and everything.”_

“ _Really?” says Luca breathlessly. “Will there be music?”_  
  
“ _Uncle Ivan said he's going to bring his fiddle,” said Alek. “And Huldi's twins are going to sing, and there'll be drums and flutes and—”_

“ _Dancing,” Luca breaks in, “and dancing, Papa,_ please— _”_  
  
 _Papa pushes himself to his feet. The thunder in his broad, scarred face makes Luca's insides twist up._  
  
“ _No,” he says. Then he ducks out the door. His anger lingers behind, thick as smoke._  
  
 _Alek turns to Luca. The muscles in his jaw are jumping._  
  
“ _Do you know what the overseers say about you?” Alek says._  
  
“ _Alek,” says Mama warningly._  
  
“ _They say you look like a girl.”_  
  
“ _Alek!”_  
  
“ _And they aren't the only ones,” Alek goes on, ignoring her. “Last week I had to punch Eon because he asked how much your dowry is. Do you know how many men Papa has had to fight over you? Do you know what_ they  _say?”_  
  
“ _Don't you dare,” Mama hisses._  
  
“ _They say you're an abomination.”_  
  
 _Mama crosses the room in two strides and slaps Alek across the face._  
  
“ _Don't ever let me hear you call him that again,” she says._  
  
 _Alek touches his cheek. Mama's handprint is white on red._  
  
 _Papa appears in the doorway. When he sees Mama staring down a cringing Alek and Luca crouching wet-eyed in the corner, he raises his eyebrows but doesn't comment._  
  
“ _I have something for you,” Papa says, almost sheepishly. He's holding a box full of waxy red balls._  
  
“ _What are they?” asks Luca._  
  
“ _Fruit,” says Papa, setting the box down on the ground. “From the wolves' city. Here, try.”_  
  
 _He tosses one of the red fruits to Alek, who catches it one-handed, and another to Luca, who fumbles and has to chase the rolling fruit across the floor. When he catches it the side is bruised brown. He uses the hem of his tunic to rub away the dirt._  
  
“ _The honeycake must be ready,” Papa says. “We'll make a feast.”_  
  
 _Mama smiles then, a_ real _smile for the first time in so long. When she pulls the loaves of honeycake from over the fire they are hot and golden and fill the room with their crisp, mellow smell. Mama and Papa and Luca and Alek sit on the warm stones before the hearth. The fruit and honeycakes are laid out before them, a display of impossible riches._  
  
This must be how the wolves eat every night _, Luca thinks._ In their city across the sea…  
  
 _He fills his mouth with bites of fruit and honeycake until his cheeks are stuffed. It's like swallowing the sun. Luca closes his eyes. Sweet. This is what sweet tastes like._  
  
“ _Who wants to hear how the Goddess created the world?” says Papa, voice rumbling with good humor. He and Mama laugh when Luca and Alek start up a clamor of “I do! I do!”_  
  
“ _In the beginning there was only the Goddess, and the Goddess was all; there was sea or sky, no earth, no people, and she was alone_ … _”_  
  
 _Alek scoots close to Luca. “I didn't mean it,” he whispers. “Friends?”_  
  
 _Luca rests his head on Alek's shoulder. Alek drapes his arm over Luca's back. They eat cake and fruit and listen to Papa tell them the story of how everything began._

 

 

_*_

  
  
The smell of death filled Luca's nose. He came to himself choking and sputtering.  
  
“Welcome back, bitch.”  
  
Luca was already shaking, even half-conscious. Now, fully awake with the Beast kneeling between his spread legs, Luca's chest began to heave with panic. The shackles around his wrists and ankles rattled as tremors wracked his body.  
  
“I don't think he's happy to see you,” said a smooth, dry voice from across the room.  
  
Luca didn't have to look to know the Pig was there, watching. He turned his head to the wall, muffling little noises of despair into the mattress.  
  
“And it seems he doesn't want to see  _me_  at all,” the Pig continued wryly. “Though it's hardly the first time that sentiment has been expressed.”  
  
The Beast closed the vial of smelling salts and tossed it on the table beside the bed. He grabbed a handful of Luca's hair and jerked him so that he faced the Pig. Luca offered no resistance. He wanted to go away inside his head again, but they could tell when he wasn't all there. The Pig always knew.  
  
The Pig watched from an armchair—the same chair every time, high-backed and imperious as a throne. It was thoroughly at odds with the starkness of the damage room. Maybe that was the effect he wanted. The Pig's trousers were unlaced, but he didn't touch himself. Instead he watched Luca with his beautiful red-blue eyes, the hint of a smile playing at the corners of his ruined mouth.  
  
“That was terribly impolite of you, Luca,” said the Pig mildly. “Passing out with nary a by-your-leave. I'm disappointed.”  
  
“'m s-s-sorry, s-sir.” His voice was raspy from screaming. The words were barely coherent.  
  
The Pig tipped his head as though he didn't quite catch that. Then he smiled.  
  
“No,” he said, tapping a fingernail against the arm of his chair. “Not yet. But you will be.”  
  
The Beast grinned. He reached over and picked up the –  _thing_. It was a long wooden wand branded on one end with a boar's head and tipped at the other with twin metal prongs. There was a crank on the side. The Beast began to wind it, building up a charge.  
  
Luca screamed. He screamed without conscious thought, a long, keening wail of terror more animal than human.  
  
“Haven't even started yet,” said the Beast, sounding offended.  
  
The Pig laughed. “He knows what it feels like now.”  
  
Luca did know. It felt like fire and venom at once, burning as the sting ripped through his nerves. Most cruelly of all, it left no marks. They could hurt him like this over and over again. Luca's scream broke into sobs.  
  
“We wouldn't have to use the prod at all if you hadn't convinced some poor fool to pay your protection fee,” said the Pig kindly. “It's your fault this is happening, Luca. You understand that, don't you?”  
  
Luca tried to say  _yes_ , but before he could force the word out the Beast touched the prod to his thigh. For a brief instant Luca felt nothing but a deep, biting cold. Then he arced up like a bow, spasms seizing every muscle in his body. White light bloomed behind his eyes.  
  
… _and the Goddess's right eye became the sun and her left eye became the moon so that she was able to watch over the Chosen in the light and the dark…_  
  
Luca fell back on the mattress, limp as a doll. His thigh twitched. His cheeks were wet.  
  
“You are so beautiful like this,” said the Pig. His voice was hoarse with arousal. “Again.”  
  
This time Luca started screaming before the pain started. When the prod touched his nipple he was struck dumb. Everything fell away. He was suspended in a silence without end.  
  
… _and the Goddess saw that the Chosen would suffer at the hands of the Apostates and she wept for her people until her tears became the sea…_  
  
A slap brought Luca back.  
  
“Breathe, damnit!”  
  
Obediently, Luca dragged down a searing lungful of air. It felt like stretching a badly cramped muscle. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes, but he forced himself to suck in deep, even breaths.  
  
“Careful,” chided the Pig. “If his master finds marks, we won't be allowed to play with him anymore.”  
  
“Shame,” said the Beast. “Little bitch looks good bruised up.”  
  
“When he belongs to me I'll have you bruise him every day,” the Pig promised. "In fact, I'll insist on it."  
  
Luca struggled to steady his breathing. If he passed out again they would be angry with him. The slap had knocked his head to one side; his vision was blurry, sliding in and out of focus. He could just make out the distant outline of a door. Robert—

 _No_. When would Luca learn? Nobody was coming to save him.  
  
“Again.”  
  
The prod dug into Luca's other nipple. The current crawled into his flesh, wringing spasms so violent they terrified the part of him that could feel anything but pain. He grit his teeth and fought to stay present, riding each big wave of hurt as it crested. It was so much worse like this, forcing himself to feel every jolt eel through him, but it was right, it was what the Pig wanted. Whatever the man wanted was right. Luca would be good, he would give the man what he wanted, and then maybe the pain would end.  _Lady_ , let it end…  
  
And it did, so abruptly that Luca kept screaming out of sheer reflex before he realized that the prod had been taken away. He fell back on the mattress, panting. Had the Pig seen how hard Luca had worked to keep conscious? Was he pleased?  
  
“Slut didn't faint like a girl this time,” the Beast noted, winding the crank. “Getting bored, slut?”  
  
Luca shook his head frantically. The Beast laughed. He leaned over, shadowing Luca with his bulk. He was hard, of course. The hot, horrible length of him rubbed against Luca through his breeches. He shoved his tongue in Luca's mouth and Luca tried to respond like he was supposed to, sucking him in hungrily and struggling not to cry when the Beast's hand pressed against his still-cramping thigh. Luca managed to raise his leg enough to rub against the Beast's erection. Perhaps if he got fucked they would lose interest in him after. He never thought taking the Beast's cock would be the lesser of two evils, but even that couldn't hurt as much as the prod.  
  
“You've been too soft on the boy,” the Pig sighed. “He's grown spoiled. I trust you will amend the error?”  
  
Luca sobbed against the Beast's mouth. The Beast pulled back, grinning. He picked up the prod and positioned it between Luca's legs.  
  
“My pleasure.”  
  
Luca didn't bother holding on to consciousness this time. When the prod entered him, he fell gratefully into oblivion.


	20. Chapter 20

 

After the Pig and the Beast were finished with Luca they left him lying on the mattress in the damage room. He drifted in and out of the world, flying on wings over white snow only to return to a body still shivering with the aftershocks of pain. He thought he heard Alek whispering “Friends?”; then the voice became Robert's, promising impossible things.  
  
Cool fingers brushed his neck. Luca's eyes flew open. He cried out instinctively.  
  
“Don't be an idiot, Luca,” Bagoas snapped. “Get up.”  
  
Luca obeyed, fighting down nausea. Asher caught his elbow when he swayed. The boy's face was a pale mask of distress.  
  
Bagoas ran deft hands over Luca's skin to make sure it was unbroken, then bent him over the bed to check the state of his hole. If Luca could speak he'd tell Bagoas not to bother; the Beast hadn't fucked him with anything but the prod, and that had left no traces of its passage after the last of the all-consuming agony had faded. But he couldn't bring himself to do anything but submit silently to the examination.  
  
“Good,” said Bagoas approvingly. “They've left you unmarked. You will see to your next patron in High Parlor after supper.”  
  
Luca felt his stomach twist. Usually he was given the night to recover after an appointment with the Pig. He wanted nothing more than to pull a blanket over himself and hibernate until he couldn't feel the Beast's hands on him anymore.  
  
“ _What?_ ” Asher was outraged. “You can't really—I mean,  _look_ at him, Bagoas—”  
  
“I see no bruising or tearing or any other cause for concern,” Bagoas said, shrugging. “The Councilor and his slave were careful, as per our master's orders.”  
  
“Careful!” Asher hissed. “They – they  _tortured_ him!”  
  
Bagoas sniffed. “Would that all torture was so mild.”  
  
“You have no idea—”  
  
“Don't I?” Bagoas bared his teeth in a smile utterly without humor. “Our master had them test their device on me first, to make certain that it would not blemish the flesh. They were quite thorough in their demonstration. Believe me, I have some idea. Luca can work.”  
  
“I can work,” Luca echoed. He touched Asher's arm, placating and warning at once. “Asher, don't make trouble.”  
  
Asher ground his teeth. “You're hurt. You're  _always_ hurt.”  
  
“It doesn't matter,” said Luca.  
  
He was seeing Robert tomorrow. Nothing mattered but that.  
  
  
  
Luca forced himself through his appointments. Every time a man rutted into him it was like the prod had been shoved between his legs again. Each touch woke the ghost of the current. Luca wanted to scream. He almost did scream once, when the man on top of him pushed in too fast and the friction burned like a cold metal shock. Instead Luca smiled. He smiled his pretty, stupid whore's smile and clenched tight around his cock up his ass, purring filth until the man spent inside him. When Luca caught a glimpse of himself in the washstand mirror after, he thought for a moment that he beheld a stranger. His face had never looked so drawn, his eyes so vacant.  
  
Once the last patron was done with him and he had scrubbed the residue of that night's service from his body, Luca curled up on his pallet around Robert's book. It smelled of him still: tobacco, red wine, and the clean, masculine scent that was distinctly Robert. Luca breathed it in and felt something unclench in his chest. He began to read.  
  
After several pages, Luca was sure he had been right to worry that he wouldn't know when to laugh. He had no idea what was going on. Men and women walked in and out of rooms shouting at each other. If one of the shouting people threw a glass of bubbly (what  _was_ bubbly?) or smashed a plate or ripped their hose climbing out of a window before an unloved spouse returned, all would be put right by invisible servants before the next scene. And why were the people shouting, anyway? There was always enough food; nobody was ever beaten or used. Luca was sure that he would never be able to appreciate literature. He decided to pretend that all of the characters were insane.  
  
Read like that, the story was deliciously absurd. Luca had never read anything so ridiculous in all his life. He laughed so hard he had to muffle himself with the sheet. When he finally nodded off, head pillowed on the open page, dawn was rising over Lyonesse. Luca's lips were still curved in a faint, true smile.  
  
  
  
Luca couldn't wait for Robert on the bed this time. Instead he paced around High Parlor, footsteps half-dancing. A patron had held Luca down at a party once and poured something bitter and sparkling down his throat; it made him feel fizzy all over, lightheaded and giddy with anticipation. Luca felt like that now. When the bell sounded, Luca didn't bother to ring back. He simply threw the door open.  
  
Robert stood with his hat in his hands, looking abashed. “I'm early,” he admitted. “I would have been earlier, but I took the long route on purpose.”  
  
Luca grinned so broad it hurt his cheeks. He took Robert's hand and pulled him inside. The moment the door was shut they fell against each other.  
  
“Three days,” said Robert, holding Luca's face in his hands. “Three days is a  _damned_ long time.”  
  
“Five years,” Luca reminded him. He was having trouble thinking clearly with the heat and weight of Robert pressed so close to him.  
  
“I'll never make you wait like that again.” Robert kissed his forehead. “Gods, I'd take you home with me now if I could.”  
  
Suddenly Luca was eight years old and the Commissar was forcing his legs open.  _If you're a good little boy I'll let you go home when I tire of you_. Luca shook his head, pushing back the unwelcome memory. No. Robert was different. Robert was kind. He wouldn't lie. If he said he wanted to bring Luca home, it was because he truly did. Gods, Luca hadn't had a home in so long…  
  
“I don't think your flatmates would like that,” Luca said, trying to keep the tremor from his voice.  
  
Robert laughed. “Don't worry, Val will love you. Finally, someone who's read as many books as he has! I should warn you, though, that four bachelors do not a tidy flat make. You'll have to be forbearing until I can find us our own place.”  
  
“I'll clean,” Luca said quickly. “I can be useful. You'll see.”  
  
Robert winced. He hid it with a quick smile, but Luca could read men too well to be fooled. He'd said something wrong. What had he said wrong?  
  
“So how did your master like your account of Robert d'Argent, the pious wet blanket?” Robert asked, quirking an eyebrow.  
  
Luca giggled. “I gave you a passion for orchid cultivation. I hope you don't mind.”  
  
“In that case, I'll have to bring you a bouquet next time,” Robert said. “Which reminds me, I have something to show you.” He reached into his pocket. “It's a marvel, look—”  
  
Luca was on his knees before he could think. He could hear himself begging,  _please sir_ and  _don't_ and  _I'm sorry_  running together like a child's nonsense babble. Robert was a shadow looming over him, the box in his hands a silent promise of pain.  
  
Robert fell to a crouch, hands spread palm-up as if to quiet a scared animal. He murmured soothingly until Luca's breathing steadied and his pleas tapered into whimpers.  
  
“Sh, now.” Robert pushed back a sweaty curl back from Luca' temple. “What's the matter, baby? Did I say something wrong?”  
  
The box was tucked under Robert's arm. Luca couldn't take his eyes off it. He had been bad. He had been bad and now Robert was going to hurt him with the box. Little shivers ran over Luca, goosepimpling clammy skin. He choked back a sob of despair.  
  
Robert followed Luca's glassy gaze to the box and frowned. “Luca, what do you think this is?”  
  
“It's for punishment,” Luca whispered.  
  
Robert's expression darkened, but he kept his tone even, careful. “No, sweetheart. It's just a music box.”  
  
Luca shook his head. He recognized one of the Pig's toys unmistakably.  
  
“Has someone hurt you?” Robert asked gently.  
  
Luca's first instinct was to deny it. Robert would never want to touch Luca again if he knew what had been done to him. But Robert looked almost pleading. If Master Boq thought Luca wasn't telling him something he'd have Sark whip him until he confessed. Robert was  _asking,_  really asking. As though Luca had a choice.  
  
Luca bit his lip. Then he nodded.  
  
“It didn't leave any marks, what they did,” he said, wanting to assure Robert that he wasn't scarred, wasn't ugly. “They weren't allowed to leave marks.”  
  
Robert took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly through flared nostrils. When he spoke, his voice was strained. “What did they use on you?”  
  
Shame burned in Luca's chest. “They called it a p-prod.”  
  
“A  _prod_? Fucking hell!”  
  
Luca flinched. Robert took another deep breath and said more calmly, “They're for herding livestock. I've heard of them being used on political prisoners but—” He broke off, clenching his teeth. “What makes you so afraid of the music box?”  
  
Luca pointed with a trembling finger to the figure branded on the wooden side. A boar's head.  
  
“Councilor deBorse's regalia?” Robert frowned. “Why—” Horrified comprehension broke across his face. “ _Oh_.”  
  
“He puts it on all his toys,” Luca whispered. “He says that once I belong to him he'll brand it on me, too.”  
  
“Gods,” Robert said quietly. “Luca, the man you're talking about. Is he scarred?”  
  
Luca nodded. “Pox-eaten. His cock, too. That's why he has the Beast.”  
  
“The man from the satyr play? deBorse's slave?”  
  
“They're brothers,” Luca said. “Half-brothers. The Beast told me. His mother was their father's whore.”  
  
“Then deBorse must be the other buyer,” said Robert, almost to himself. “ _Fuck_.”  
  
Luca's eyes went wide. “You know the Pig?”  
  
“The Pig? Is that what you call him? Fitting.” Robert's smile flickered briefly before being replaced by a grimace of disgust. “He's my Grandfather's colleague, one of the King's advisers. The King's spymaster, some say. He's – dangerous.”  
  
“I know,” said Luca softly.  
  
Robert looked pained. When he touched Luca's cheek, his hand was shaking.  
  
“I want to kill him,” Robert said hoarsely. “I'm having very explicit fantasies about cutting him into little pieces and letting you  _stomp_ on them.”  
  
Luca turned to press his lips to Robert's palm. Robert pulled him close, burying his nose in Luca's neck and inhaling deeply. Luca closed his eyes. Lady, he could stay like this forever, feeling Robert's heart beat against his…  
  
“Would you have told me about deBorse, if I hadn't found out like this?” Robert asked suddenly.  
  
Luca looked up, startled. “But – why?”  
  
“Because I might have  _done_  something about it, damnit!”  
  
Luca shrank back, alarmed by the intensity of Robert's anger. Free men didn't care what happened to slaves; complaining only ever made things worse. Besides, the Pig had every right to use Luca's body as pleased him. Would Robert have burst into the damage room with his sword drawn like an avenging god? Looking at Robert's clenched fists, Luca realized that was exactly what he wanted to do.  
  
“I'm sorry,” he mumbled. He couldn't think of anything else to say.  
  
Robert buried his head in his hands and groaned. “You have  _nothing_ to be sorry for,” he said, raking his fingers up through his hair. “Just promise me that the next time someone hurts you, you'll tell me. Please.”  
  
“I promise,” said Luca obediently.  
  
Robert took Luca's chin between his thumb and forefinger. “This will never happen again, Luca. I swear it.”  
  
Luca swallowed. His throat felt thick.  _Don't cry!_ he thought sternly. He'd disgraced himself in front of Robert enough today. Should he start blubbering gratitude on top of it, Robert would probably think he was as mad as the shouting people in his book.  
  
If Robert was annoyed with Luca, he didn't show it. He had begun to smile the dreamy half-smile that Luca had come to associate with being kissed. Robert reached out to cup Luca's jaw, fingers tracing his cheekbones. Luca's pulse quickened. He wanted to lean into the touch, but he remembered how Robert pulled away the last time he seemed too eager. He held himself very, very still and tried not to let his excitement show. Perhaps Robert desired him after all. Perhaps he would let Luca repay his kindness properly.  
  
Robert started as if waking from a daze. “Sweetheart, I don't want you so that you can be useful. I just want you for yourself. You understand, don't you?”  
  
Luca didn't understand at all. Was Robert saying that he didn't think Luca could be useful? Which meant that Robert didn't want to use him.  _I just want you for yourself._ Did Robert not like the way Luca looked, then? But surely there was nothing else of Luca worth wanting…  
  
“ _Do_ you understand?” asked Robert, uncertain.  
  
Instead of answering, Luca tipped his face up hopefully. Robert's sigh was almost a groan, but he leaned down and took Luca's mouth. Luca arched up and parted his lips, inviting Robert to deepen the kiss. Robert's breath stuttered. His tongue was all heat and smoke, and he sucked Luca's mouth like he wanted to drink him in.  
  
Abruptly, Robert drew back. Luca was left gasping, not nearly sated.  
  
“You make it supremely difficult to form a coherent thought sometimes,” said Robert, voice half an octave higher than usual. “We're going to have a long talk once I get you out of here. And I  _am_ going to get you out of here, Luca. Please believe that, if nothing else.”  
  
“I do,” Luca said fiercely. “I do.”


	21. Chapter 21

 

The pawn man squinted through his loupe at the ring he held up to the light. “Not worth much,” he said dubiously.

Robert bit back a growl of frustration. The ring had been his mother's, a bit of costume finery gifted by his father during a generous mood. While Robert knew the diamond was paste and the band was gilt over brass, it was still the only thing he had left of Maman.

“Just give me your best offer,” he said through gritted teeth.

The pawn man shrugged. “Thirty sou. Fifty, if you throw in your vest.”

Robert looked down at his velvet waistcoat. New, it cost treble what the pawn man was offering. He sighed and began to undo the buttons.

“Fine. And the swords?”

“Ah.” The pawn man turned to the assembled  _épée_ _s_. “These I'll take as a lot. Iberian work?”

“Obviously.”

Robert's gorge rose as he watched the fat little tick handle his best swords. He reminded himself of what Gregori Boq had told him after he'd burst into that bastard's office and raised seven kinds of hell:  _I may reconsider my indisposition to sell the Golden Bird, should my lord's offer prove persuasive._  All Robert had to do now was raise a small fortune and Luca would be his. Luca would never have to take another man again if he didn't want to. He would never have to take  _Robert_  if he didn't want to. Robert thought of Luca cowering on the floor, begging not to be hurt, and had to swallow back bile.

Could he ever even be anything to Luca but another rapist?

“This is a pretty thing,” said the pawn man, breaking Robert's morbid reverie. He held up the épée with the blued bell-guard, Grandfather's bribe for the Hunt Ball. “I'll have to get those initials buffed away, though. It'll cost.”

Robert snorted. “Well?”

“Ten crown.” Seeing Robert's expression, the pawn man added defensively, “You won't get a better price in Lyonesse, I promise you that.”

He was right. This was the third pawnshop Robert had tried, and ten crown the best he'd been offered. Still, the meanness of the sum stung.

“Ten and a quarter,” Robert said. He wasn't about to let the tick think him an easy mark.

A flash of gold caught Robert's eye, winking from beneath the grimy glass counter. He leaned down. Trinkets were scattered on the dusty shelf, all cheap widow's flash like Maman's ring. But here in the corner was the gold that had drawn Robert's attention: a hair comb, wrought in the shape of a bird.

“How much?” Robert asked, pointing.

The pawn man glanced down. “Do the fancy sword for ten flat and the rest for forty, and I'll throw in the golden bird as a piece of goodwill.”

Robert started. The golden bird? Well, he'd take that as an omen of luck.

“Done,” said Robert. “I've another proposal for you as well, if you're interested.”

The pawn man smiled, exposing double rows of yellow teeth. “I'm  _always_  interested.”

Robert reached down the front of his shirt and pulled the regalia up by its chain. He only brought it high enough so that the griffin's head was visible at his throat; still, the pawn man knew what he was looking at. His face went slack with shock. He dropped a low, clumsy bow.

“Oh gods, don't bother,” said Robert. “Look, you're a fellow who knows his business. You have connections. Think of this as a high-stakes investment.”

“Your lordship, don't take this for cheek, but it's not worth my life to pawn that piece,” said the man hoarsely.

“I'm not asking you to  _pawn_  it,” said Robert in tones of infinite patience. “I'm simply wondering if you have a...shall we say a friend, a businessman of taste and discretion whose clientele might be interested in gems of unusual provenance.” He tapped the griffin's ruby eye.

“Ah.” The man licked his lips. “I may know such a gentleman. He's not easy to get in touch with, mind. A friend of a friend. You understand?”

Robert nodded sagely, trying to look as though he were well-versed in underworld politics.

“Of course there would have to be payment for my trouble,” the man went on. “A finder's fee, if you like.”

It took an exercise of will for Robert to keep from rolling his eyes. “Of course.”

“Come back in a week, lordship,” said the pawn man. “I'll have your man.”

 

When Robert returned to the flat, he was not at all happy  to find Tolliver sitting on the couch and blithely sipping a cup of tea. Val hovered in the corner like a servant, teapot clutched in his hands. Robert stomped over to Tolliver, snatched the teacup, and threw its contents into the fireplace.

“Out,” Robert said, pointing at the door.

“It is good to see sir so well,” said Tolliver placidly. “May I beg a moment?”

“No. Get out.” Then, to Val, “You see what happens when you encourage him? He starts begging moments.”

“Sir's sense of humor is, as always, droll,” said Tolliver. He stood and smoothed the creaseless front of his uniform. “Sir may be interested to hear that I have been sent by my lord to settle the matter of a certain defaced statue with the College bursar. The man was quite garrulous, and related the most outlandish tales. Why, he seemed to believe that sir was once found naked in a fountain with two diplomatic exchange students and a lawn ornament! Libel, no doubt.”

Val made a noise that could have been a swallowed snort of laughter. Robert's face went hot.

“Er—”

“And of course the story about sir disporting himself with Lord Courtney's son on the greenhouse roof while a botany class was in session below is the most contemptible gossip,” Tolliver went on. “Had my lord not charged me to relay every detail of my encounter with the Bursar to him upon my return, I would have stopped listening at once.”

“So it's the stick this time,” said Robert darkly.

Tolliver tilted his head. “I cannot imagine what sir might mean by that.”

Robert sighed. “I'll just go upstairs and get dressed for dinner, shall I?”

“I think that would be best,” said Tolliver.

If Robert didn't know better, he would have sworn the bastard was smirking.  


 

Upon arriving at the manor, Robert was shocked to find Grandfather already seated in the cavernous formal dining room. The old man typically preferred to let Robert wait, salivating over his untouched meal, before arriving as if on afterthought once ten minutes had ticked by. And here was another unprecedented sight: the table was spread with stuffed quail, buttered eel, venison pie, artichokes in cream, sweet and savory puddings, a whole pheasant, and lamb still tender on the bone. There was not a trace of bran in sight. Robert's mouth watered.

“Come, my son,” Grandfather intoned. He gestured to the chair at his right.

Robert slid into his seat. Servants materialized and vanished, leaving him with a heaping plate. Grandfather pursed his lips at the excess, but did not comment. Another first.

Instead of launching into his customary interminable lecture, Grandfather picked at his own meager portion and watched Robert over his knife. When he spoke, his tone was nonchalant.

“How is young Adrian Courtney these days?”

Robert choked. He took a gulp of wine to clear his throat.

“Why do you ask?”

“Is it not natural for a man to inquire after his grandson's affairs?” said Grandfather lightly. “I believe in some quarters of society such phenomena is known as conversation.”

“I don't know how Adrian is,” said Robert, stabbing a slice of quail with his fork. “You'll be pleased to hear that he's no longer among my  _affairs_.”

“If you expect me to offer condolences, I'm afraid I must disappoint you,” said Grandfather. “The son of an upstart silk merchant, Robert? It is as though you go out of your way to be deliberately vexing.”

“Whose son would you rather I vex you with?”

Grandfather speared an artichoke on the tip of his knife, brought it to his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. He swallowed and said, “What do you think of Lady Estelle Fontaine?”

Robert shrugged. “Good dance partner, shame about the face.” Then, suspiciously, “Why?”

“Her father and I have discussed the matter at length,” said Grandfather. “We have come to the decision that a courtship would be amenable to all parties concerned.”

Robert's fork clattered against his plate. “ _Courtship?_ But—Estelle Fontaine is a  _woman!_ ”

Grandfather's expression was long-suffering. “I'm sorry to be the one to disillusion you, my son, but you cannot marry a man.”

“Then I cannot marry,” Robert declared.

Unfortunately, Grandfather was not impressed. “That is not possible, as you very well know. You have been humored for long enough, Robert. I've borne countless indignities on your behalf, suffered the derision of my colleagues thanks to your reputation and…sexual predilections. You are approaching your final year at College; it's time to make a match.”

“I wasn't aware I had an expiration date,” said Robert between gritted teeth.

“You do,” said Grandfather. “And it is timed for the end of my patience.”

Robert made a strangled noise of frustration. “Well, what does Estelle have to say about all this?” A thought occurred; he smacked his palm against the tabletop. “A _ha_! Estelle is like me, isn't she? I should have guessed. She kept trying to lead. I'll lay wager that she doesn't want this anymore than I do!”

“Estelle understands her duty to her family,” said Grandfather severely. “You won't have to live together after your first child is born, provided it's a son.”

Robert went hot with indignation. “You want to breed me like a stud horse!”

“A stud horse would be more cooperative.”

“Well, I'm not a horse,” Robert retorted. _“_ I'm a twenty year old man and a citizen of the realm who has the right to make his own damn choices about how he spends his life.”

“You're not a man, you're a spoiled brat with no appreciation for the sacrifices that have been made for you,” Grandfather said, spitting his words like sharp tacks. “Marriage is hardly a death sentence. Estelle comes from an excellent family; her father is a colleague and an important man at Court. She comes with extensive property in the provinces, as well as a dowry that would keep you in wine and boys for a century.”

Robert's mouth twisted in a bitter, humorless grin. “Wine and boys. Is that all you think I want, Grandfather?”

“If you have other priorities, my son, I have yet to see the proof of it.”

Grandfather's tone was as light and cold as swordsteel. What he said cut almost as deeply. Robert closed his eyes against the sting. When he opened them, Grandfather was regarding him with an expression of triumph. He thought he'd won.

“I am not going to marry Estelle Fontaine,” Robert said levelly. “Or any woman, for that matter. And I'm not coming back to Court, I don't care how many bloody  _épée_ _s_ you buy me. I'm going to finish my degree at College, and then I will accept a professorship in law.”

Declaring his intentions aloud was like opening a window in a stale room. Robert felt a rush of relief. He exhaled slowly, savoring it.

“A professorship!” Grandfather snorted. “What makes you think College would offer you a post?”

Robert tried to keep his voice steady. “I'm at the top of my class. The Chair of the law department is retiring. My thesis—”

“Your thesis.” Grandfather's  voice dripped with derision.

“Professor Gregory says—”

“This would be Maximus Gregory, the man who's so fond of standing on an upturned fish crate in Capitol Square and shouting libel about the King's Council?”

Robert set his jaw. “Professor Gregory is a genius.”

“Professor Gregory is a crackpot.”

“His book on judicial inequality reshaped the philosophy of law—”

“—and even that won't save him from the gallows, if he continues to make a spectacle of himself.” Grandfather sighed. “Truly, Robert, you baffle me. I have given you a name, a home, a legacy, the finest education a young man could wish for. You lack nothing. What more could you possibly want?”

Robert thought of Luca's soft voice, his shy, sweet smile, the way he gave himself to Robert when they kissed. Luca, pure and radiant with love—like a star, like a clear, bright light. He was so quietly, utterly  _good._  Being with him made Robert see the goodness in himself. What was Grandfather's approval next to that? Robert knew, with sudden, sure conviction, that he needed Luca, needed him desperately. Nothing mattered but that.

Robert threw his napkin on the table and stood.

“I want to be free,” he said simply.

With that, he turned on his heel and walked out.

 


	22. Chapter 22

Luca stirred the pot of salve with his fingers, mixing oil and jelly into a thick, foul-smelling cream. Asher lay belly-down on the pallet, hips propped up by a folded blanket. When Luca smoothed the salve around the raw, bruised ring of his anus, Asher buried his face in his hands to muffle angry sobs. Luca wanted to tell Asher to scream, just scream if it would make him feel better, but he knew Asher would only take it for pity and hate him all the more.

“It could've been worse,” Luca said, trying to believe it. “They were careful. He prepared you. You didn't tear.”

“So I should be happy that he didn't fuck into me dry and rip me apart?” Asher hissed. “Go to hell, Luca.”

Luca bit savagely into his lip, feeling a sick little thrill when he tasted blood. He worked in silence, daubing salve over the bite marks on Asher's thighs, the purpling crescents on his hips, cursing himself every time Asher made a noise of pain. When all of Asher's wounds were treated, Luca capped the pot and tucked it under the pallet. The salve had not been cheap; Sark would be visiting Luca tonight after his appointments.  _And if you complain to your ponce of a lord, love, I'll mess that pretty face up so bad he'll never want to fuck you again…_

Abruptly, Asher said, “I'm sorry.” His voice was rough with unshed tears.

“This is all my fault,” Luca said, twisting his fingers in his hair. “I didn't think Master would give my appointments with the Pig and the Beast to you. I just didn't  _think_.”

“Shut up,” said Asher. “You always think everything's your fault.”

Luca shook his head, knowing Asher couldn't see him. “I wish they'd done it to me instead of you.”

“Me too,” Asher admitted. He pushed himself up to sitting, growling as the movement strained his muscles. He quested around for a cigarette and scowled when he didn't find one. Then, suddenly: “Do you ever wonder what it would be like – dying?”

The question startled Luca into honesty. “Yes. Well, I used to. All the time.”

“It would hurt at first,” Asher said thoughtfully. “But then you'd never hurt again. It would all just...end.”

Luca thought of the dead bodies he'd seen, their still white features relaxed in a kind of peace. “My people believe that when we die, our souls are taken to the land of the Goddess.”

Asher looked at him, curious. “Is that where you'll go?”

“No,” said Luca. “Not me. But my family will be there, I think.”

Asher leaned into Luca, resting his head on his shoulder. Luca tucked his arm around Asher's waist.

“I don't want them to do it again,” Asher mumbled. “I can't take it, Luca, I  _can't_. I'd rather be dead.”

Luca squeezed Asher so hard that he made a squeak of protest. “ _Please_ don't say that. I'll fix this—talk to Master, ask him to give me the Pig's appointments back. Anything. I won't have them hurt you instead of me.”

“That's almost as bad,” said Asher, voice cracking. “Them hurting you.”

“I'm used to it. Good at it.” Luca laughed tightly, curling his fingernails into the soft flesh of his palms. “It's what I'm for.”

Asher opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. He squeezed Luca's wrist. They sat in silence, the shared warmth of their bodies saying what words couldn't. Asher seemed so small, suddenly, younger and far more vulnerable than when he was swearing a blue streak, whining about his patrons and backtalking Bagoas. When Luca was his age he had already been a whore for so long that he couldn't imagine any other life, but Asher ached for his freedom every day. Luca could see the pain of it written on his face.

A thought struck Luca. “Asher, I want to show you something. Can you walk?”

Asher hesitated only a moment before saying, “Of  _course_ I can walk.”

This proved to be an overly optimistic assessment. Asher could limp, provided that he held on to Luca's arm. They went through the passage and up the back stairs to High Parlor like one four-legged creature. Asher alternately spat expletives and burst out laughing when Luca pretended they were two blind beggars, leaning on each other for support.

It took Luca a minute to find the window amongst all the shimmering fabric and mirrors. He retraced his steps until he found the transparent square of glass hidden behind a swath of drapery. The air whistling through the cracks smelled sweet and crisp, like autumn. Luca had almost forgotten that outside the seasons were changing, snow turning over into new growth, green rusting into red and gold. Nothing ever changed in the brothel. Luca knew when it was summer because the air was stuffy and the men drenched him in sweat; in winter their hands were cold and their fingers felt like ice inside of him. Otherwise time crawled by, each day identical to the last.

Asher hobbled over to the window and touched his fingertips to the glass. “Gods,” he breathed. “This is  _brilliant_ _._ ”

Luca's chest swelled with pride. He'd never given someone a real present before. He'd never had anything to give.

“You can see all the way to the harbor,” Luca said, wanting to show Asher everything at once. “Look at the ships! Like white birds on the water.”

“I think my family lives somewhere over there.” Asher pointed at shadowy blocks of tenement buildings. “There's a dry old fountain in the square, and we used to catch the roaches that lived in the drain and set them loose in the laundry. Those girls would  _scream_ _!_  The stocks were there, too—we'd bring Pa food and keep him company when he was locked up. And there's a tuck shop on the corner, my brothers and me would pinch bread and cigs when the shoppy wasn't looking.” He grinned, remembering. “Wonder what my brothers are doing now.” His smile faded. “Wonder if they wonder about me.”

Luca scrambled for a distraction. “Look, there's the Palace! And you can even see the King's menagerie. They say he owns every beast alive and has them fight in his arena. Do you think it's true?”

Asher didn't seem to hear. “I know why Boq had all the windows boarded up and won't let us go outside,” he said, splaying his hand against the glass. “How can we stand being locked up in this place when there's a whole bloody  _world_  out there? Seeing it everyday—it would be like torture.”

Asher hesitated. Then he said, “You ever think about running away?”

Fear lanced through Luca in a white-hot jolt. He took Asher by the shoulders, spun him away from the window and shook him.

“Don't dare say such a thing! Don't even think it! You've no idea how lucky we are—how much worse it could be. Do you know what they do when a slave tries to run?”

Asher shook his head, eyes wide.

“They send dogs after you. You can't outpace them. They smell you from miles away and they don't ever stop, not until they find you. Then they tear into you like a rabbit until their handlers call them off. _If_  they call them off. There was a boy I knew once who tried to run, and when the slave-catchers brought him back our master let the dogs rip him apart. He made us watch. When they were done the body didn't even look human—”

“Stop,” Asher gasped, looking sick.

“Mostly, though, they hamstring runaways,” Luca continued ruthlessly. “Let them bleed out. But there's no profit in that. Master Boq would sell you. You think the Harlequin is bad? You have no idea. There are places where men like the Pig pay to take whores apart, piece by piece. It lasts  _days_. They'll make you beg for death. At the fuckhouse that used to own me, they'd take boys down into the cellar and the screams would go on and on—”

Asher shoved Luca away. “Shut up!”

“Or they won't kill you,” Luca went on, almost delirious. “That's the worst punishment of all. They chain you to a bed and let the men line up at the door, beat you and starve you and drug you until you forget your own name. You'll be so far gone when your body finally gives out that it won't even be a relief. Nobody will notice you've died until one of the men fucking you complains about the smell. Then they'll throw your corpse in the bay and buy a new boy to take your place.”

Asher bent over, retching drily. Luca's lungs were hot and tight. His pulse throbbed in his ears like a headache.

“I hate you,” Asher sobbed. “I hate you, I hate you…”

Luca pressed his hands over his mouth. “Lady,” he said through his fingers. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please, Asher, I can't let you get yourself killed, you don't understand, it's so good here, Master Boq is so good to us, so kind—”

“ _Kind?_ ” Asher's voice was so shrill it was almost a screech. “He's a fat old  _worm_ _!_  How can you be loyal to him after what he makes you do?”

“I live to please my master,” Luca said automatically. “I am grateful for his mercy. My only thought is to obey—”

“I can't stand it when you say shit like that!” Asher shouted. “It's not even you! Those aren't your words! You're just like Boq's fucking phonograph, singing whatever tune he wants you to. You don't have any mind of your own!”

Luca's breath caught in his throat.  _Parrot_ _,_ Sark had called him. Dumb slut. Brainless barbarian. Pretty little toy, little doll. Empty-headed girly-boy bitch.  _Stupid whore_. Luca hugged himself, face prickling with sweat and tears.

Asher's face went a mottled white and red. His mouth worked furiously, as though he were chewing something bitter.

“I didn't mean it, okay?” he said in a rush. “You do have your own mind. You have the best mind of anyone I know.”

Luca tried to smile. “It doesn't matter.”

“You always say that,” Asher muttered, scowling. “It  _does_ matter.”

Luca didn't want to make Asher upset again. He forced his smile wider and said quickly, “Listen, I've been thinking. Your hair has gotten so long, and you always wear it down. Why don't I show you how to pin it up, braid it, try something new?”

“Why?” Asher asked, suspicious.

“Patrons don't like getting hair up their noses,” Luca said. When Asher frowned, he rushed on, “I can teach you how to do your maquillage as well. You have such a beautiful face, Asher, truly. It would be so easy to double your earnings, rise up in the ranks. You could make third whore, even. And maybe – maybe I could give you some advice on your appointments? It can be hard when you're just starting out, to know what the patron wants, how to please him. You didn't go through a training house like I did. There's so much I can teach you—”

Asher looked as though he wanted to hit Luca, or vomit, or both. He made an abortive gesture, fist curled, then dropped his hand with a sound of disgust.

“You have to try, Asher,” Luca said desperately. “Please. Please promise me you'll try.”

Asher shook his head and backed away, as though Luca was something rotten.

“I don't want to be like you,” he said. Then, voice rising, “I  _won't_ be like you!”

Asher slammed the back door behind him, leaving Luca standing in front of the window. Luca leaned his forehead against the glass. He could feel the thrum of the city in his bones. The world below was at once so close and impossibly far away.

“I don't want to be like me, either,” he said to the empty room.

 


	23. Chapter 23

 

“You like that? You like my big dick up your ass? Say you like it.”

It took a moment for Luca to realize that he'd been given an order. He made himself shape the words. “I like it.”

“Yeah, you fucking love it. Pretty little shit. Take that dick.”

The patron snapped his hips, hammering into Luca with punishing force. His face was red with exertion, teeth bared. Drops of sweat spattered Luca with each thrust. Luca fisted the sheets and tried to breathe through the deep ache in his rectum. This man had been fucking him for what seemed like hours, keeping up his monologue the whole time. Luca told himself to stay present, to give the man what he wanted, but he could only shiver silently as his body pitched back and forth under the endless thrusting.

“Hot, wet hole. So open for me. You're my bitch. My  _bitch_. Go on, say it.” The patron sounded annoyed. “Do I have to do everything for you?”

“I'm sorry, sir.” Luca wet his lips and forced a smile. “I'm your bitch.”

“Fuck  _yeah_ , you are. Tight blond bitch. Make me come.”

Luca felt a sudden emptiness and realized the patron had pulled out. He reared up, twisting a hand in Luca's hair and forcing his head down. Reflexively, Luca opened his mouth. The patron pushed his still-hard cock inside. He shouted and finished, filling Luca's throat.

Luca felt the savage urge to bite down. He had to force himself to keep his jaw slack. Lady, what was  _wrong_  with him today?

“So good,” the patron groaned, grinding his bush against Luca's nose. “Drink it down, slut.”

Luca swallowed obediently. The patron shuddered, softened, and withdrew. A string of spit and jism slopped down Luca's chin. He raised his hand to rub it away, then dropped it, afraid the patron would take offense.

The patron wiped his cock off on Luca's hair, still muttering obscenities under his breath. He stood, gathered his scattered clothes and dressed in quick, sharp movements, face dark with displeasure.

“I'm disappointed,” said the patron, sneering down at Luca. “My friends told me that the Golden Bird was the best pleasure slave in Paradiso, but you're just another used-up whore. I should ask your master for my money back.”

Luca knew that he ought to beg the man's mercy and offer to make it up for him with an enthusiastic screw, but he couldn't summon the energy. The man left, slamming the door behind him. No doubt he would make good on his threat and complain to Master Boq. Luca couldn't be beaten now, but there was nothing to stop his rations from being cut. He found himself strangely unable to care.

Luca lay on the bed for as long as he dared. Finally the sour, gluey taste of old cum forced him up and over to the wash-basin. He washed his mouth out; then, ceding to some darker urge, pushed his fingers down his throat until he vomited up three patrons'-worth of semen and his breakfast. He watched the mixture swirl down the drain, feeling a perverse sort of satisfaction.

After rinsing out his mouth again, Luca put the bed in some semblance of order. Then he curled up on the floor, hair spread over his naked body. Luca closed his eyes and rocked back and forth, back and forth, like the steady tick-tock of a metronome. He blanked his mind, making a clean white space where he could simply rock and rock and feel nothing until the next man arrived to take away whatever pieces of himself he managed to salvage.

The chime of the bell startled Luca back to the present. He scrambled to his feet, heart beating rabbit-fast. He ran his hands over his face, through his hair, checked his ass to make sure he was still oiled and ready. Then he knelt and pulled the bell.

When Robert entered, Luca was so surprised he almost fell off the bed.

“It's you,” he said stupidly.

“Of course,” said Robert, grinning. “Who else would it be?” He quirked an eyebrow and sighed. “Ah, I see. You were you expecting a tall, dark, handsome stranger? I suppose you'll have to settle for a tall, shabby, ginger-haired friend. So sorry to disappoint—”

He was interrupted by Luca launching himself across the room and into his waiting arms. Robert swung Luca around in a slow circle, laughing his deep, rich laugh. Hearing it made Luca's toes curl with delight. He buried his head in Robert's chest to hide his smile. Robert smelled like coffee today, coffee and crumbs of toast. There were stray flecks of ink on his neck. Luca resisted the urge to lick them away.

Robert set Luca down with a quick kiss on the top of his head. When he pulled away, his eyes widened.

“You're not wearing any clothes,” Robert said, voice strangled.

Luca looked down at himself. “I – no.” Then, in a rush of boldness, he said, “Why, do you want me to?”

Robert dropped his gaze. He shucked off his frock coat and held it out, staring determinedly at the ground. Luca was suddenly, furiously ashamed. He took the coat and pulled it on, turning away to button up the front. It was huge on him, collar slipping from his shoulders while the hem almost brushed the floor. It felt strange to be so covered up in front of a man. Wrong.

“There,” said Robert. “That's better.”

Luca's stomach twisted miserably. Robert didn't want to see his body. Of course he didn't. What had the patron said?  _Just another used-up whore_.

“Thank you,” Luca mumbled. “Thank you for coming to see me.”

Robert looked surprised. “Of course. I come as often as I can.”

Luca thought, guiltily, of the expense. Robert must be spending a small fortune on these appointments. And for what? To kiss Luca and touch him gently, chastely, apparently unconcerned with his own neglected erections? He'd grow tired of that soon enough. A man like Robert didn't need to waste his time on a neurotic slave he didn't even want to fuck. He should be with someone free, someone who came with no complications. Someone completely unlike Luca, who was old and filthy and still loose from the last half-dozen men who had used him.

“Are you all right?” Robert asked, breaking Luca's self-flagellating reverie. His brow was furrowed with concern.

“Yes,” said Luca, hoping it sounded true. He mustered his courage. “Robert, may I ask you something?”

Robert's expression softened. “Anything, sweetheart,” he said. “You don't need my permission.”

Luca took a steadying breath. “Please – please will you stop paying the protection fee?”

Robert blinked. He stared into the distance for a moment, as if reviewing what Luca had just said. “Come again?”

“Master gave my appointments with the Pig to Asher. He acts so tough, but he's only a boy, and he was born free, and he misses his family so much, and—” Luca broke off, dangerously close to tears. “It isn't that bad, what they do to me. Really.”

“You must be joking,” Robert said, voice edged with disbelief.

Luca shook his head. “I know how to handle it. I've been trained. Asher hasn't. It's not right that he should be hurt instead of me.”

“So you'd martyr yourself in his place?” said Robert.

Luca nodded vigorously. “Yes. Please.”

Robert made an aggrieved noise somewhere between a groan and a sigh. He ran both hands through his hair, so that it stood up in two wings. “And what if I paid the protection fee for both of you?”

Luca blinked. “You – you'd do that?”

“Rather than see you hurt, yes.” Then, softly: “I would pay anything.”

And suddenly, without any conscious intention, Luca was kissing him. It was not a timid brush of the lips but a messy, urgent, hungry joining, all teeth and tongue. He strove upwards on tiptoe, forcing Robert's head down with fingers tangled in his hair. Luca knew on some distant, rational level that he was being unforgivably forward, but he didn't,  _couldn't_ , care. He needed Robert like this, without scripted words or schooled smiles, with nothing between them but breath.

Robert made a sound of surprise, which became a low, throaty growl when Luca pushed up against his crotch. Lady, the  _heat_ of him. His cock was like smoldering iron against the curve of Luca's hip. Luca wanted it inside of him. He wanted to be claimed that completely. Luca moaned into Robert's mouth, overwhelmed by desires that he could not name.

“I shouldn't,” Robert managed to choke out.

Luca was sure that if Robert pushed him away now he would fall apart completely. He unbuttoned the coat and pulled Robert's hand inside, guiding it down to his ass in wordless invitation.

Robert exhaled raggedly. He hesitated only a moment before tightened his grip, stroking and kneading the tender swell of flesh. Luca arched into the touch, not caring how greedy he must seem. Robert slipped his other hand under the coat, captured a peaked nipple between thumb and forefinger and tweaked it until Luca thought his knees would give out. Dangerous warmth pooled in his bottom belly. Luca gave a shuddering gasp, fingers digging into Robert's arms.  _Control yourself_ , he thought sternly. A slave thought only of its master's pleasure, not its own. Robert would never want to be his master if Luca made a slut of himself by getting hard.

“Do you like that?” Robert murmured. He ghosted a fingertip over Luca's crease.

Luca was shaking. There were mutinous things going on between his legs. He bit into the swollen corner of his lip and thought desperately of sucking Boq, of the Pig's face and the Beast's stiff dick. When that didn't work, he imagined Robert's reaction if he discovered that Luca had hardened at his touch—the revulsion shading into fury, the harsh words and raised fist. Robert's disgust would hurt so much worse than the punishment that was sure to follow. He would never dirty his hands on Luca again.

Mercifully, Luca felt the heat in his groin abate. When Robert reached down he found Luca safely unaroused, the flat front of the frock coat proof of his discipline.

Robert frowned. “You don't – I mean, you're not – I thought you wanted—”

“I do want it,” Luca said, confused. “I love it. Please don't stop.”

“Luca, I don't understand,” Robert said carefully.

Luca wanted to sob with frustration. What had he done wrong? He  _always_ did something wrong. He pushed the coat from his shoulders and dropped to his knees. Robert's cock was full in his breeches, straining needfully. A drop of wetness had seeped through the fabric. Luca pressed his lips there, inhaling the scent of copper and musk. Robert tasted so good. Rich, clean. Luca had to clench his thighs together to keep the unwelcome rush of warmth from reaching his prick.

“Luca.” Though Robert kept his voice even, Luca could hear his arousal. “Luca, what are you doing?”

Luca began to unlace him, fumbling with urgency.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please let me do this.”  
  
  
  
  
  



	24. Chapter 24

"Please. Please let me do this.”

Robert was having a great deal of trouble thinking rationally with Luca on his knees in front of him. The part of his mind not currently drugged senseless on endorphins was sending up a red alarm, but Robert found that he was temporarily incapable of paying attention to anything but Luca's hot mouth a hairsbreadth from his cock.

Luca ran his hands up Robert's thighs, cupped them over the untidy bulge of his erection. Robert bit off a groan.  _Fuck_  but Luca was good with his hands. He caressed Robert through his breeches as he unlaced him. Robert's cock sprang free and they both sighed, Robert in relief and Luca with a kind of reverence. Robert was so hard it was painful, erection sticky with precum and jutting nearly vertical. Even Luca's breath against his overheated skin had him wanting to thrust his hips forward and bury himself inside.

Robert almost sobbed with need when Luca took his length in his hands. Luca handled him with worshipful care, pulling back the ridge of foreskin and rubbing his cheek against the shaft. It looked obscene, Robert's dark red cock smearing over Luca's delicate face. Violent.

“Stop,” he said quietly.

Luca's soft, pleading whimper made Robert's chest hurt. In one practiced movement, he swallowed Robert's cock to the root.

 _Gods_. Robert knew that he was big, not monstrously so, but certainly long and thick enough that most partners avoided deep-throating him. Adrian tried it only once and had complained about a sore throat for days afterward until Robert bought him a new pair of earrings to shut him up. But Luca, _fuck_ , Luca sucked Robert down effortlessly. His chin nudged Robert's sac, nose buried in the crisp thatch of pubic hair. Robert was wracked with a jolt of excruciating pleasure as Luca contracted his throat, muscles massaging his length. When Luca hummed around Robert's cock the sensation was so intense that his eyes rolled back and his legs almost gave out. All coherent thought fell away. His world narrowed to that wet, tight channel.

Robert was brought back to reality by a tiny choking noise. He looked down to see Luca with his eyes closed and his hands crossed behind his back at the wrist. Tremors were running up and down his thighs. His expression was not the rapturous picture Robert had imagined but a grimace of determination. Luca forced his head down even more, mouth open so wide his lips were bloodless. Robert's heart sank when he realized that Luca's own penis was still curled between his thighs, pink and soft and completely unaroused.

This was not sex. It was rape.

The last thing Robert wanted to do was traumatize Luca even more. He touched the quivering line of Luca's jaw and pushed him back. Luca obeyed immediately, hollowing his cheeks in a deep, slow suck as he pulled away. Robert's cockhead emerged from his mouth with a wet pop. Luca licked two fingers before reaching down to push them up his ass, stretching himself open with a deftness that made Robert ache.

“No, sweetheart.” Robert knelt and caught Luca's wrists. “I don't want that.”

Luca's face crumpled. “I'm good at it,” he said, desperate. “I'm clean. You can pretend I'm someone else.”

Robert felt ill. His consternation must have shown, because Luca's eyes went wide with panic.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, _please_ don't be mad! Hit me, punish me, anything, I'll learn, I'll be good, please don't leave me here, _please_  don't leave—”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Robert heard his voice break. “How can you think I would hurt you? I'd rather cut off my own hand.”

Luca said nothing, but his expression was hopeless. He was shaking so violently he looked as though he were having a seizure. Robert ran a distracted hand over his hair. Gods, he was the last man alive who deserved to love this beautiful, damaged boy.

“Of course I'll stay,” he said. “I never meant to leave.”

Luca slumped with relief. “Thank you, sir.”

Robert took Luca's chin between his fingers and tilted his face up until their eyes met. “Robert,” he said firmly.

Luca managed a weak smile. “Robert.”

Robert ran his thumb over Luca's cheek. Luca leaned into the touch, brushing his swollen lips against Robert's palm. To his dismay, Robert found that the gesture was enough to rouse his flagging erection. He dropped his hand hastily.

“I'm not angry with you,” Robert said, choosing his words carefully. “I'm just concerned that I haven't made my intentions clear.”

“I know you don't want me,” Luca blurted out. When Robert began to protest he rushed on, “Of course you don't, you're handsome and brilliant and you must have so many lovers, and I'm, well, I know what I am, but you've been so good to me, and my body – my body is all I – that is, I would be honored if you use my body as pleases you, sir – Master – Robert—”

“Luca—”

“If you want. Whatever you want.”

Luca was blushing furiously.

“Are you finished?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” Robert took a deep breath. “I do want you, Luca. I want you very badly. But you – you don't want me, do you?”

The moment the words left him, Robert went hot and cold with mortification. What a bloody fool he'd been! Five years was a long time. Perhaps Luca had desired him once, when they were both children and knew less of the world, but Robert had grown into a peaky, gangling, long-nosed oaf while Luca was the same exquisite creature he'd always been. Surely Luca hadn't missed that fact, glaringly obvious as it must be to anyone but Robert.

“But I  _do_  want you!” Luca said hotly. “I do, I want to be yours, I want you to do whatever you want to me—”

Robert's stomach dropped even lower. “Sex shouldn't be something that's done  _to_  you, Luca.”

“I don't understand,” Luca said, near tears with frustration.

Robert scrubbed a hand over his face. “When I was touching you, and then when you were –  _servicing_  me, you didn't respond sexually. I mean,” he clarified when Luca opened his mouth to object, “You didn't have an erection.”

Luca reeled back, white with shock. “No! I was bad, I know I was bad, I shouldn't have forced myself on you, but I'd never be  _that_  bad, swear on anything!”

Robert stared at Luca. He was shaking again, arms wrapped around himself as though he were cold.

“I am beginning to feel that we are on two very different planes of conversation,” Robert said. “What, by the names of all the gods, is so terrible about getting an erection?”

Luca blinked. “I'm a slave,” he said, as though it were obvious.

Robert frowned. “What does that have to do with getting hard?”

“I'm trained not to,” Luca said, startled. “All pleasure-slaves are.”

“Well – well, I didn't know that,” Robert said, feeling extremely stupid. “You're the only pleasure-slave I've ever really known. I mean, Francis talks about his favorite boys all the time, but I've honed the ability to tune him out. And there are slaves at Court, of course, but I don't—”  _See them_ , Robert thought. _Because even though I like to think I'm better than the other lords, I still treat slaves like furniture._ “I didn't know,” he said. “I thought – I mean, I hoped that you would, well, enjoy it. The way I enjoy it.”

Luca shook his head. “Not allowed."

“Why in in the hell not?” Robert demanded. He spoke louder than he'd meant, and when Luca winced he wanted to smack himself.

“A slave lives to serve the pleasure of its master.” Luca sounded like he was reciting a lesson. “If a slave develops desire of its own, it will become selfish and willful and no longer serve its master with the proper devotion and enthusiasm. A slave must never feel pleasure while it is being used. That would be…that would be bad. Wrong. A pleasure-slave who couldn't control himself—” He looked sick at the thought. “The punishment would be terrible.”

Robert was struck by the memory of being thirteen and in bed with Luca, the younger boy stroking Robert's fledgling erection and murmuring encouragement until he spilled his first true orgasm over Luca's hand. When he had reached for Luca after, determined to return the favor, Luca had pulled away. _Not that, Robbie, please._ When Robert had pressed, Luca said sternly,  _I'm not allowed. It isn't right._ And Robert would have asked why, except that Luca's fingers were wrapped around his cock again and the question was lost in a fog of pleasure.

Robert felt a sudden rush of fury that Luca had been robbed of such an intimate part of himself. Wasn't it enough that he had lost his family, his childhood, Robert himself? Hadn't he been through  _enough_ , damn it?

“Of all the awful, twisted, fucked up…” Robert's voice was shaking. “Luca, I had no idea. I never would have laid a hand on you if I'd known.”

“It's never been a problem before,” Luca said, winding a curl between his fingers. “But with you – when you touch me, I – I like it. I like it too much.”

“So you do want me?” Robert said hopefully. He winced, hearing how raw his need was.

Luca squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. “Are you mad?”

Robert felt like he had swallowed the sun. When he spoke his voice sounded an octave too high, choked with relief. “I'm over the fucking moon. This may very well be the best moment of my entire life.”

Luca beamed and pounced forward, hands on Robert's thighs. “Then you'll use me?”

Robert took Luca's hands from where they had landed all too close to his crotch and folded them between his palms.

“People aren't supposed to use each other, Luca,” Robert said gently. “You use an object, not a human being. If I had sex with you now, as a patron in your master's brothel, I would be no better than a rapist.”

Luca shook his head. “You can't rape a slave.”

Robert thought of Luca at eleven, kept locked in Lord Frederick's chambers for days on end. Robert's room was in the attic above. He used to torture himself by putting his ear to the floorboards, listening to Luca's soft gasps and the squeak of the bed as Lord Frederick moved on top of him. Sometimes Lord Frederick's friends would join him, and then the gasps would become low, hopeless sobs, punctuated by the occasional cry of pain. When Robert would rage afterward and swear to bring the Watch down on Lord Frederick for hurting a child, Luca would only shrug, dull-eyed and listless. Even then, he'd known no one would care.  _You can't rape a slave._

“Yes, you can,” Robert said. “Damnit, you  _can_ rape a slave. What those bastards do to you is rape. It always has been.”

Luca looked confused. “But the law says—”

“The law is  _wrong_ _!_ ” Robert found he was almost shouting. Luca froze, taut with fear. Robert took a breath and forced himself to calm. “The law is wrong.”

“Yes, Robert,” Luca said, looking uncertain.

“I keep thinking about the night we met.” The words came tumbling out before Robert could stopper them. “What happened to you on stage. How I didn't do a damn thing to stop it.”

“You fought the satyr,” Luca said.

Robert barked out a bitter laugh. “It was an _act_ , Luca. If Francis hadn't tipped me to play Melchior I would've sat in that audience and watched as you were hurt and done absolutely nothing.”

Luca bit his lip. “It was just a play.”

“But that's your life, isn't it?” Robert said, with sudden awful understanding. “That's what it's like for you here. That's what it's always been like.”

Luca looked miserable. “I'm disgusting,” he whispered. 

“You are not disgusting,” Robert said as fiercely as he dared. “You're sweet and beautiful and so damn smart it scares me sometimes. But if I – _took_ you in that way, I would be no better than any of the others.”

“You're nothing like them!” Luca said. “It wouldn't be anything like that with you!”

The memory of the satyr forcing his cock between Luca's split lips came to mind unbidden. Luca on his knees, mouth stretched wide as Robert fucked into his throat. Robert shook his head to dispel the image.

“Listen, let's not talk about this now,” Robert said. “We'll figure it out after I buy you, all right?”

“You still want to buy me?”

The quiver of uncertainty in Luca's voice rose a lump in Robert's throat. “Of _course_ I still want to buy you! Sweetheart, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I'm in love with you. Haven't I told you that enough?”

Luca's hands on Robert's lap were trembling. “No,” he said in a small voice. “You haven't said you loved me. Not since five years ago.”

Robert put his head in his hands and groaned. If that wasn't just bloody  _perfect_. He would goad Grandfather into disinheriting him and sell everything he owned out of love for Luca, all while forgetting to inform Luca himself of that simple, crucial fact. Brilliant. Well done, Robert.

Robert brought Luca's hands to his lips and kissed his fingertips. “I love you. I love you. I love you.” He punctuated each vow with a kiss. “And I don't have any lovers. There's no one but you. There's never been anyone but you, not really. And there won't ever be anyone else but you ever again.”

“Truly?”

“Truly,” said Robert, and he had never meant it more.

Belatedly, Robert remembered the pawnshop comb. He took the wrapped package from the pocket of his vest and pressed it to Luca's palm. Luca unfolded the wrapping slowly, careful not to tear it. The comb lay in a nest of tissue paper.

“Not a book, I'm afraid,” Robert said. “I hope you like it anyway.”

“It's wonderful. It's perfect.” Luca curled his fingers around the comb. His rapt expression shifted, hardening into resolve. “I won't let anyone take it away. I swear.”

Robert opened his mouth to demand who, exactly, had been taking things from Luca; then, on second thought, closed it. Luca probably wouldn't tell him, and Robert wasn't sure he wanted to know.

“May I?” Robert gestured to the comb.

Luca nodded. Robert swept Luca's hair into a knot and slid the comb into place. It nestled perfectly at the base of his neck, a flourish of darker gold against Luca's curls.

“How does it look?” Luca asked. He turned his head from side to side.

“Beautiful,” said Robert. “You are so beautiful.”

Luca ducked to hide his blush. “Thank you.” He took a deep breath. “I love you. I didn't say, before, but I do. I love you so much, Robert.”

Robert couldn't stop himself from reaching out to cup Luca's face in his hands. He stroked Luca's chin, his cheekbones, traced the line of his parted lips. Luca's flush deepened. He tilted his face up, eyes glazed.

“Are we still allowed to kiss?” he asked, breathless.

Robert furrowed his brow, pretending to consider it. “I think that kissing will be acceptable, yes.”

Their lips met. Robert had enough wherewithal to wonder what service he had done the gods in some past life that they would bless him with Luca. Then Luca deepened the kiss, opening under him with a sweet moan of delight, and Robert was no longer able to wonder about anything at all.


	25. Chapter 25

 

Luca folded his body backwards, palms flat on the floor. The bend stretched his muscles deliciously. He held the position until his thighs began to shake; then, in one fluid movement, he kicked his legs up and shifted his weight into a roll that brought him over and back up to standing. Luca had already canted his hips and moved his arms into the next step of the dance when he saw Sark leaning against the door.

“This is my practice hour, sir,” Luca said quickly. He didn't want Sark to think he was skipping out on an appointment. “I'm dancing for a party tonight. I need to prepare. You can ask Bagoas.”

“I know,” Sark said. “Bagoas told me where to find you.”

His voice had none of its usual drawling disdain. Luca saw for the first time that Sark's skin was ashen, his eyes sunk in dark pouches.

“Sir? Is everything all right?”

Sark jerked his head. “Follow.”

Luca pulled on his tunic and hurried after, taking three footsteps for every one of Sark's long strides. Sark led him through the dormitory halls, which were eerily hushed. Boys peered out of doorways, all staring and silent. Luca felt an uneasy twist in his stomach. Had he done something wrong? Oh, Lady, the patron who left before Robert – he'd made good on his threat to complain to Master Boq, and now Luca was being summoned for punishment. But surely Master Boq couldn't whip him, not after Robert paid the protection fee? Luca remembered the prod and swallowed. Maybe the Pig had shown Master other ways you could make a bad slave hurt without ever leaving a mark…

By the time they reached Master Boq's office, Luca was clammy with dread. His breath came in ragged gulps. He didn't know what Master Boq would have Sark do to him, but it was going to be bad. Then with a start Luca realized that he was still wearing the comb Robert had given him. There wasn't time to hide it. Master Boq would see it for sure, and then he'd order Luca to hand it over.  _Much too expensive to waste on a slave. Wouldn't you agree?_

Luca set his jaw.  _No_. Master was not going to take the comb. The comb belonged to Robert, just like Luca. If Master Boq tried to steal it, Luca would – he would – well, he couldn't imagine what he would do. He would lie, maybe, tell Master Boq that Lord d'Argent wanted to see him wearing the comb from now on. But then nothing would stop Master Boq from confiscating the comb away between appointments. Luca couldn't bear the thought of Master touching Robert's gift like he touched Luca's body, pawing at it with his greedy, careless hands. The comb was something precious. And even if Luca wasn't, Robert loved him. That meant he was worth something now. Master Boq couldn't take that away, at least.

Sark didn't bother knocking on the door. He simply shouldered it open.

Luca froze. The Pig and the Beast were in Master Boq's office. The Beast was leaning against Master Boq's desk with his arms crossed over his chest and the Pig was talking, talking, his smooth voice filling the room. Master Boq nodded, frowned, his face working like a marionette's as the Pig talked and talked. Luca realized in a distant sort of way that he had stopped breathing. His body was shaking so hard he was sure that he would come to pieces.  _Careful_ , he thought hysterically.  _Mustn't fall apart on the master's clean floor._

Sark saw that Luca hadn't moved. With a noise of irritation he dragged Luca into the office and shoved him to his knees. Upon hearing the door shut behind them, it took every ounce of Luca's will not to crawl to Master Boq's feet and beg for mercy. The patron must have been horribly important if Master was angry enough to call in the Pig and the Beast to punish him.

A darker possibility entered Luca's mind, and he had to press a hand over his mouth to stifle a whimper. What if Master Boq had finally agreed to sell Luca to the Pig? What if they were here to take him away?

Master Boq looked up to see Sark and Luca. He scowled. “And  _why_  did you feel the need to fetch the Bird, overseer?”

Sark ignored him. He took Luca by the elbow and pulled him to his feet.

“Look,” he said quietly.

For the first time, Luca noticed Bagoas. He was leaning over a pile of blankets, face white and drawn. A small hand flopped on the floor. The fingers were stained with nicotine, nails bitten to the quick.

Everything faded. The Pig was talking again, but Luca barely heard him. He crossed the room, marveling distantly at his ability to put one foot in front of the other, to propel himself forward in space. Bagoas made a move as if to block Luca's way. Then he sighed and stepped aside.

Asher lay sprawled on the floor. His eyes were closed. His skin was impossibly pale. Luca had the brief impression that Asher's face had split in two. No, not quite split: a jagged cut ran from chin to forehead, deep enough to expose bone. His hair was matted with blood. Still drying, Luca noted with detachment. It had not been long.

“Show him,” Sark ordered.

Bagoas pulled the blankets back. Asher wore a silk loincloth, torn and muddy. His right leg was twisted at an angle that made Luca's stomach hurt. Asher's breathing was labored, halting. A death's-rattle. The bloody edges of his mouth had already begun to blue.

Luca knelt at Asher's side. He took his hand. It was so small, so cold.

“He tried to escape,” said Sark. “Climbed out a window in High Parlor and fell scaling the ivy down. A patron found him lying outside the front door.”

“Why?” Luca's voice sounded strange, faraway. As though it came from someone else.

Sark jerked his chin at the Pig. “Guess he caught wind he being sold.”

The Pig's quicksilver voice flowed over Luca. He caught words like  _contract_  and  _compensation_. He heard the Pig say, “We are naturally willing to accept a trade if you are unwilling to reimburse the debt-slave's full sale price.”

Luca could feel the eyes on him. Master Boq, calculating; Bagoas, pitying; the Pig, triumphant. Sark watched him, face shadowed. Luca felt the Beast's presence like a heavy hand at his neck.

It would have been the Beast who told Asher.  


_Do you ever wonder what it would be like – dying?_

Carefully, Luca reached up and pulled the comb from his hair. Then he stood, concealing the comb in his palm. When he turned, the Pig and Master Boq were engrossed in brokering his sale. The Beast was looking at Luca with a lazy, mocking grin. He rubbed his crotch, thrusting his hips in a crude parody of sex.

_It would hurt at first._

Luca put one foot in front of the other. He appreciated, remotely, that this was something Asher would never do again. The Beast watched him, head tipped to the side. His cock was hard. His expression was of idle curiosity.

_But then you'd never hurt again._

Bagoas knew something was wrong. He moved away from Asher, trying to subtly position himself in front of Luca. Sark remained motionless. Luca heard the skritch of a striking match, smelled the sharp odor of cheap tobacco catching light. He knew somehow that Sark had lit a cigarette for him. This was his way of saying goodbye.

_It would all just...end._

Luca raised his arm. The golden comb caught the light. Bagoas shouted a warning, strangely muffled. Then Luca brought the sharp bird's wing down across the Beast's face. Gold splashed scarlet. The Beast reeled back, roaring. He scrabbled at his eye with red-stained fingers. There was a buzzing sound, like flies on a corpse. The Beast brought his fist up. Luca had time to think of Robert before the blow landed and the world fell away.  
.  
.

*

_Cold. A deep blue agony of cold, burning his tongue, his lungs. It is so cold Luca would cry if he could. Alek crouches over a little fire. His teeth are clenched in a grim line as he rocks and rocks for warmth, hands opening and closing convulsively over the weak white flames. There is a black mark burned deep into his cheek:_ FVG _. Fugitive. This isn't the first time Alek has tried to run._

_When Alek sees Luca he groans._

“ _Not you again,” he says. “You're dead.”_

*

.

  
.When Luca woke he thought for a frantic moment that he had gone blind. There was no difference in the degree of blackness whether his eyes were open or closed. He remembered the Beast clutching at his ruined eye. Had the Goddess punished Luca by taking his sight?

After a minute that seemed to last a year, Luca adjusted to the dark. He could make out a shadowed corner and pitch-colored ceiling. Not blind, then. Or dead. He shifted, wincing when he found his hands and feet tied. Rope, by the feel. He knew from painful experience that rope was dangerous. It could cut off circulation if you weren't careful, leaving extremities bloated and numb. Luca felt a spike of panic. He couldn't crawl or beg or be fucked if his limbs were useless. Luca forced his hands and feet to life, wiggling his toes and rubbing his palms. He bit back a whimper as blood flowed back through pinched veins.

Once his fingers stopped tingling, Luca took inventory of the rest of his body. Aside from the headache where the Beast's fist had struck he was miraculously whole. A pity, that. He'd rather hoped the Beast would succeed in killing him on the first try.

_Liar_ , Luca thought.  _You never wanted to die. Not really._

It was true. Even with Asher half-dead of Luca's own stupidity, he still clung desperately to life. If he was brave, a real man, Luca would be glad to follow Asher into death. He would be eager for the Pig and the Beast to murder him by inches, grateful to them for giving him the closest thing to a warrior's death that a whore could hope for. He wouldn't be shivering on the floor like a scared little boy and praying for Robert to save him.

Luca buried his face in his shoulder and grit his teeth against rising sobs. He had no right to cry. It was Luca who'd shown Asher the window. It was Luca's brainless mistake that had as good as killed him. Luca's fear was nothing to what Asher must have felt when he fell, Luca's pain nothing to what that excruciating jolt of impact. How dare Luca pity himself? Whatever happened to him, he had earned it. He didn't deserve to be rescued – let alone by Robert, who was so brave, so good. If Luca was smart like Robert, he never would have shown Asher the window. He never would've let himself get so infatuated that he didn't even notice Asher was hurt. Robert fixed problems and helped people. Luca was so weak and stupid he couldn't even protect the one person in the world who needed him...

A line of light appeared under the door. Luca heard Master Boq approach, saying something as he came. A deeper voice answered. The tone was curt, clipped, and full of contempt. Luca couldn't make out the words, but he knew from the snivel of deference in Master Boq's reply that the other man must be important. A lord?

Footsteps from more than two pairs of feet sounded through the passage outside. Luca managed to push himself up onto his elbow and roll up and onto his knees. He spread his legs as wide as his bound ankles allowed. When the door opened, Luca was struck by searing brightness. He bowed forward, head between his knees. Burning pinwheels danced under his eyelids.

“This is the one they call the Golden Bird?”

The man's somber voice rolled over Luca like a wave of dark water. Lady, he even  _sounded_ noble. Luca bowed lower, pulse pounding in his ears.

“Yes, Your Grace,” said Boq meekly.

The man snapped his fingers at Luca. “Kneel up, slave. I want to see your face.”

Luca hastened to obey. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the ground between the man's shoes. Black leather, not new but unscuffed, with silver buckles and squared-off toes that had gone out of fashion a decade ago. His hose were spotless black cashmere. Luca was suddenly very aware of his puffy eyes, the sweat and tears drying on his face. He felt grubby and small.

The man bent down and grabbed Luca's chin with an ungentle hand. “Look at me, slave.”

Luca had to force himself, cringing, to raise his eyes. The man was old, as old as Lord Fulke, with a hooked nose and white hair pulled into a lord's knot at his nape. His eyes were a lighter gray than Robert's, the color of polished silver. Luca felt awful knowledge twist in his chest like a knife.

The man turned Luca from side to side, examining his face with the cool remove with which he might appraise a painting. “Ah,” he said quietly. “Yes, I can see why you caught my grandson's eye. You shall do very nicely indeed.”

The man dropped Luca's face and stepped away. He withdrew a white handkerchief from his vest and wiped his fingers as though he had just touched something unpleasant.

“He's clean? No diseases?”

“All of my lovely flowers are checked regularly by a physician, Your Grace,” Master Boq said stiffly.

“Good.” The man turned to his lackeys. “Hood the slave and take him to the carriage. See to it that he is not damaged.”

A lackey sprang forward with a burlap blind. Luca forced himself to hold very still as it was pulled over his eyes. Hope warred with terror. Robert's grandfather was going to buy him. Was Luca to be a gift for Robert?  _Oh, please,_  Luca begged wordlessly.  _Please give me to Robert. Let me be his and I'll never be bad again._

“But – but Your Grace!” Master Boq cried. “The Bird has already been sold, I signed the contract but an hour ago—”  


“ _Droit du seigneur_ ,” said the man crisply. “The slave is mine by lord-right. It will not go well for you to argue law with me, whoremonger.”

_Mine_. Luca's stomach dropped. Lady, what if Robert's grandfather meant to keep Luca for himself?

Boq made a strangled moan. “Of course, Your Grace, forgive me. But I would be remiss if I didn't warn Your Grace that the slave is violent, unstable. He just attacked another slave, the property of a valued patron, wounding him quite badly—”

Boq stopped abruptly, as though silenced by a single cutting glance.

“Your lies do not interest me.” Each word was like a shard of ice.

“Not lies, your Grace—”

“You are Erminian, I believe?” the man interrupted. “Not a citizen of Lyonesse?”

There was a small pause. “Yes…”

“And doubtless you have been paying your expatriate tax faithfully for all these many years you have dwelt in our fair city.”

Another pause. Luca could almost hear Boq wringing his hands. “ _Droit du seigneur_ , you say?”

Luca was lifted up by strong arms. They carried him through the passage and down a flight of stairs. A door swung open and Luca felt the confines of the Harlequin fall away. For that moment moment it didn't matter where he was going or who was taking him there: Luca was outside. For the first time in so long, he was  _outside_.

Luca was able to take in a breath of the sweet, wild-smelling air before he was dropped into the trunk of the carriage and the door was locked shut above him. He held the breath in as long as he could, lungs burning, white stars pricking the corners of his vision. Finally the carriage lurched forward and the air left him in a rush. Luca felt a sudden inconsolable emptiness. He curled up tight and tried not to think about a cold little hand that had once been so warm and alive in his own.


	26. Chapter 26

 

When Robert returned from class, the flat was unsettlingly quiet. Nobody was singing bawdy limericks or complaining about that afternoon's calculus lecture or shouting that their socks had been stolen. The kettle wasn't whistling and Barnabas wasn't frying anything in the kitchen. Instead Robert found Val and Hugo sitting quietly in the living room. Val was nursing a mug of something Robert assumed was tea until he caught a gust of whiskey fumes. That was odd; Val never drank. Hugo was perched on the window ledge with a bottle of wine, so nothing unusual there. When he saw Robert, he saluted him with the bottle.

“Merriest of greetings on this black day, my lord!”

“You need to get out more, Hugo,” Robert said, shucking off his jacket. “It's 75 degrees and cloudless.”

“I was speaking metaphorically.” Hugo swung his legs over the window. “Val, tell him.”

“Professor Gregory was arrested last night,” said Val dully.

Shock sent cold fingers up Robert's spine. His books dropped from his hand. “Fuck,” he breathed. Then, dreading the answer: “Abysm?”

Val shuddered at the mention of the prison-island. Hugo took a bracing drought of wine.

“No, thank gods,” Val said. “Hasty Gaol.”

“But who knows?” said Hugo darkly. “They could ship him to Abysm at any time. And once he's there, the King's torturers will crack him open like a nut. He'll spill everything.”

Val shook his head. “They won't let that happen.”

“They?” Hugo prompted.

Val pressed his lips together in a stubborn line. Hugo rolled his eyes, taking another deep pull from the bottle. He smacked his lips and grinned when Val winced at the sound.

“Where's Barnabas?” Robert asked, looking around the flat. “Gods – he wasn't arrested too, was he?”

“Barnabas withdrew from College this afternoon,” said Val. “He says he never meant to get caught up in politics like this. He's afraid the Watch will come after the Falcon next.”

“So he tucked his tail between his legs and ran back home to the Provinces like a cur,” Hugo sneered.

“Hugo!” said Val, shocked.

“Well, it's true.” Hugo shrugged. “What's that they say about shitting and the pot? If you're not going to, get off it? Barney was never truly committed. Not like we are.”

_Speak for yourself_ , Robert thought.

Hugo thrust his chin at Val. “Val, you're deeper in this than either of us. Where does the Falcon go from here?” When Val looked reluctant, Hugo's tone became wheedling. “Come on. We know Professor Gregory wasn't the only one you answered to.”

“There are plans,” Val admitted. “Big plans. I've been to meetings. No one of us knows everything, it's safer that way, but there's a chain of influence reaching all the way to the top.” His eyes flickered to Robert. “I can't say any more than that. Not here.”

Hugo leaned forward. “I want in.”

Val hesitated only a moment before nodding. Hugo grinned. His teeth were stained red with cheap wine, and his eyes were bright as a fanatic's. Val and Hugo both turned to Robert, expressions mirror images of expectation.

“Oh, no,” Robert said, backing away. “Not me. I would rather _not_ end up swinging from a gibbet in Capitol Square, thank you very much.”

“This is the next step, Robert.” Hugo pointed at him with the neck of the wine bottle. “This was what old Gregory wanted all along. He always planned to bring us in deeper.”

“When did you become a herald for the cause?” Robert shot back. “As I remember, all you ever cared about as Falcon was getting adultery laws repealed.”

Hugo pressed a hand to his heart. “You wound me.”

“Fatally, I hope.”

Hugo feigned applause. “But jokes aside, Robert, it's time. Lyonesse is broken. You know that as well as I do.” He narrowed his eyes. “Or are you going to hide behind your grandfather's apron, just like always?”

That stung. Robert felt an angry flush creep up his neck.

“I do _not_ ,” he said, “hide behind Grandfather.”

“Then prove it.” Hugo flung his arms open, half dare and half jeer. “Join us.”

“No.”

Fortunately Robert had witnessed Hugo lose his temper enough to know when to duck. The wine bottle flew over his head and shattered against the wall.

“What in the hell is more important than this?” Hugo shouted.

Robert thought of Luca looking up at him with simple, perfect trust. “I'm not the man you want,” he said. “Not anymore.”

Robert left before Hugo could find something else to throw. He did not resist the urge to slam the door behind him.

 

It was only once Robert reached College Square that he realized he didn't have anywhere to go. The gentleman's parlors were off-limits to him now, and a bar seemed like a very bad idea. He ached for Luca, but his next appointment wasn't until tomorrow and Robert rather doubted that sour-faced tough would let him through the door without a card.

Instead of choosing a destination, Robert embarked on an aimless ramble through the city. He let his feet take him where they would, paying no attention to anything but his own increasingly moribund thoughts. Not entirely to his surprise, he soon found himself walking along the ragged edge of the Lower District. This was where the carnival world of Paradiso met the docks. Everyone here had the same weary eyes, from the laborers hauling rigging on the ships to the beggar children digging in the gutter for scraps. Even the dogs looked old.

It wasn't difficult for Robert to trace the route to Maman's old lodgings. Their castle, Maman had called it. Now, with the unforgiving clarity of adulthood, Robert saw the house for what it really was: a tumbledown brothel that stank of decrepitude and fish. This was the ebb time, after the lunchtime rush and before sundown, and the windows were shuttered against the waning light. No doubt the whores inside were on their backs dreaming opium dreams while they waited for the punters to arrive.

Robert had never thought of Maman as being like the other girls. They were all raddled dockside crones with bad teeth and skin as pocked and yellow as a plucked chicken's. Maman was still the raven-haired beauty who once trod the boards at the finest theaters in Lyonesse. She was Robert's sun, and he saw the world in the light she cast. Anyone who called Maman a whore would find himself beset by a furious blur of fists and teeth. Afterward, Maman would wash the blood from Robert's lip and coo that he was her protector, her brave little bantam. He hadn't realized then that she was laughing at him.

_Gods_. Robert ran a hand over his face. He really didn't want to remember any of this. When Grandfather told him that from now on his mother was an exiled Tyrminian princess who died of the pox, Robert had felt something like relief. Not because his real mother had been an actress, or a whore, but because – and Robert knew this now – she had not been a very good person.

Even Gran knew it. That was why, when Robert was ten, he found himself marched out of the brothel by a stern old woman who made him stop cussing and start washing behind his ears. She used her meager savings to hire him a tutor, which at the time Robert had thought of as cruel and unusual punishment but he now knew was the loving sacrifice of a parent who wanted a better life for her child.

And Gran _was_ his parent, the only true parent Robert ever had. His father was a shadow, a rumor, a broken promise, the man Maman cursed when she'd had too much to drink. As for her insistence that he was the son of a Council Lord, a prince of the blood – well, how many bastards had been told the same pretty story? Maman did pursue the fiction further than most, dictating letters to Robert which excoriated his father for abandoning them to penury, but Robert never thought for a moment that any of it might be true. He may have worshiped Maman, but he hadn't tried to convince himself that she was anything approaching stable. Robert didn't even think the letters had been sent—not until he was summoned to House d'Argent and confronted by the most imposing man he'd ever seen, who brandished the ink-spattered pages like a judge wielding a gavel.

At that point Robert was so far gone in grief over Luca that he'd hardly cared. So what if his father really was who Maman claimed? The man was dead, and in a singularly ridiculous and embarrassing fashion. Maman was dead herself by then, found hanged in her room at the brothel not long after hearing the news that young Lord d'Argent had been killed. Soon Gran and Uncle Hal and the rest of Lord Frederick's household were gone as well, taken by the fever that came like a thief in the night. Grief piled upon grief, each one a heavy stone on Robert's chest until he could scarcely breathe.

And Luca, gods, Luca was the worst loss of them all. Robert was sure he wouldn't survive it – almost _hadn't_ survived, following in Maman's footsteps by stringing himself up in his posh new bedroom. Grandfather had not been pleased. _All this melodrama over a dead whore_ , he'd said disgustedly as the doctor set Robert's broken wrist. Robert hadn't been sure if he was talking about Luca or Maman.

Robert fingered the bulk of the regalia through his shirt. The ruby had to be worth enough to purchase Luca along with that page of his, the one he was willing to be tortured for. Robert knew too well what it was like to leave a boy you loved behind in hell. He couldn't let Luca endure that grief. There must be a way to buy them both. If there was, Robert would find it. Luca would never hurt again; he would see to that.

Robert found that he was walking again. His feet had taken him away from the docks and up a central boulevard. The soot-black bulk of Hasty Gaol appeared above the tenement rooftops. Robert shifted course, skirting the tenements and emerging into Charter Square. Ragged merchants hawked their wares above the clatter of carts rank with night soil. Men and women with tight faces and dead eyes trudged along with an empty kind of purpose. Hasty Gaol squatted in the center of it all like a toad. Cages hung from the ramparts, some empty, more occupied by bodies in various stages of death or dying. Carrion birds circled lazily above.

If Robert concentrated, he thought he could make out a distant, unending scream.

 

Robert appreciated the irony of showing up on Grandfather's doorstep in a Lower District hansom. It may even have been the same rickety vehicle he'd arrived in all those years before, judging by the smell. When they pulled up in front of the main entrance an outraged footman rushed down the stairs, shouting something about using the tradesman's door. His face went several interesting shades of purple when Robert emerged from the cab.

“My lord – forgive me, I had no idea—”

“Never mind, Connors,” said Tolliver smoothly, coming up behind the footman. “Our young lord enjoys thwarting expectations.”

“I have to talk to Lord d'Argent,” Robert said. “It's about a friend. He's been arrested. I thought – I thought – well, never mind what I thought. Is Grandfather in his study?”

Tolliver arced his brow. “Surely sir did not expect my lord to be at home on the first night of the of the King's birthday week?”

Robert thought of the red block he'd drawn around this week on his calendar, then of the cream-colored envelope from the Summer Palace which had immediately been consigned to the fire. He bit back a curse.

“Sir must be prescient,” Tolliver continued. “A carriage was only just dispatched to College Square to fetch you. I see that sir has yet to make his preparations for the evening,” he added, looking pointedly at Robert's stubble and disordered scholar's robes.

Robert opened his mouth to inform Tolliver that he would rather spend his time lancing boils in a leper colony than attend the opening ceremony of the King's protracted exercise in narcissism. Then he remembered the bodies rotting in cages outside of Hasty Gaol and thought better of it.

“What makes you think I plan to attend at all?” he said instead.

“My lord was under the impression you had much to discuss,” said Tolliver with a delicate shrug. “Something about a man named Gregory?”


	27. Chapter 27

 After a small eternity of being banged around in the dark, stuffy trunk, the door was thrown open and Luca was hauled out. The blind prevented him from seeing the men who passed him from hand to hand with careful efficiency. Finally Luca was put down, swaying on his feet. The bonds were cut and the blind ripped away.

Luca was standing in the most opulent bathhouse he had ever seen. The floor was marble veined with gold; the ceiling soared high above his head, held aloft on pillars inset with faceted glass jewels the size of duck's eggs. The air was perfumed with sweet-smelling steam. Carved tigers crouched around the baths, mouths open, water flowing through their open jaws. The servitors who stood at attention along the wall were as blank-eyed and unmoving as the tigers.

“So this is the new boy,” said a plummy, high-pitched voice.

Luca turned to see a eunuch watching him with fingers laced across the soft swell of his belly. Though the eunuch wore a collar, Luca did not doubt from the way he held himself that he was the master here. Luca dropped to his knees, legs spread, hands behind his back.

“Ah, good,” said the eunuch pleasantly. “He's some formal training, at least. The last one they brought me couldn't even bow without falling flat on his nose.” He snapped his fingers at Luca. “Strip.” Luca pulled his tunic over his head and surrendered it to a waiting servitor. “Burn that,” the eunuch said, waving the servitor away. He snapped his fingers at Luca again. “Present up.”

Luca stood, automatically assuming the pose that had been drilled into him at the auction house: head up and eyes down, feet shoulder-width apart, fingers laced behind his neck and back arched. The eunuch circled him slowly. Luca tried not to flinch under the clinical gaze.

“A barbarian, no older than eighteen. Blond, shaved, circumcised. Even complexion, save for light scarring on the wrists and back. The unusually artistic brand at the base of the spine indicates that he was trained for pleasure at a house of that purpose. The body is small, lithe, and narrowly built; the musculature suggests that he is a dancer. The eyes are a deep blue that those of a romantic inclination may call violet.” The eunuch chuckled to himself. “My, yes, the boy will do well. At the moment, however, he stinks of brothel.” He snapped his fingers. “Wash him.”

A trio of attendants sprang to life. If they were sexed, Luca couldn't tell: each was bald as the eunuch, similarly collared and robed in white. They led Luca to a tiled pool so deep there were stairs cut into the side. Luca had to bite back a moan of bliss when he sank into the water. Blessed Lady, he'd never had a hot bath before in his life.

The attendants scrubbed him down, first with rough cloths and then with sponges soaked in a soap that made Luca's skin smell like honey and jasmine. They didn't miss an inch of him, scouring under his nails, behind his ears, between his legs. Luca submitted to their ministrations without protest. The warm water had gone to his head like wine, making him feel exquisitely lazy.

The eunuch sat cross-legged on a cushion at the pool's edge. A servitor appeared with a tray of dainties; the eunuch selected a piece of pink fruit.

“What is your name?” he asked between bites.

Luca had his answer ready. “Whatever my master wishes it to be.”

The eunuch nodded in approval. “And what did your last master choose to call you?”

“Luca, sir.”

The eunuch arched a bald brow. “I was told it was the Golden Bird. Though I suppose that's something of a mouthful.” He shrugged. “I am Aquila.”

Seemingly satisfied with their work on the outside of Luca's body, the attendants bent him over the side of the bath and set about cleansing his insides as well. He forced himself to stay very still as water was forced into him, cramping his lower belly.

“How long have you served for pleasure?” Aquila asked.

Luca tried to keep the discomfort from his voice. “Ten years, sir.”

“How many masters?”

Luca thought back. There was the Commissar, then the man the Commissar had lost him to in a card game – but surely he didn't count, he'd only kept Luca for one night before selling him to the auction house. Then _they'd_ sold him to the training house. Did Master Trainer count? He hadn't owned Luca, not technically, but he'd been Luca's owner in every other sense…

“Did you hear me, boy?” Aquila sounded annoyed.

“I'm sorry, sir. There have been so many – so many men. I don't know exactly.”

“I see.” Aquila selected another piece of fruit. “Well, serving His Majesty will not be so different from what you're used to.”

Luca's gasp of shock was drowned out by the sound of the water flushing out of him. The attendants pulled Luca from the bath and rubbed him dry with towels that felt like fur against his overheated skin. His hair was combed out until each curl gleamed. Luca submitted to their ministrations numbly. _His Majesty._ Those words echoed over and over in his mind. Oh, Lady, no. _Please_ no…

Then the attendants led him to a low table where he was shown to lie down on his back. The attendants lathered Luca's legs, chest, groin, ass, and underarms, and began to shave him. The blades tickled. Luca tried not to sneeze.

Aquila appeared at Luca's side, wiping his fruit-sticky fingers on a cloth. Luca hesitated for a moment, then took a deep breath and blurted out, “Sir, would it please you if this slave asked a question?”

Aquila shrugged. “As you like.”

“Before, in the bath – did you say – sir, you said His _Majesty_ —?”

“Of course.” Aquila frowned. “Were you not told?”

 _I was blindfolded and shoved in the trunk of a carriage_ , Luca thought. Out loud he said, “No, sir.”

“Ah.” Aquila tossed the cloth to a servitor. “I don't imagine Lord d'Argent thought his gift needed to know to whom it was being gifted.”

His tone held a note of reproach. Luca knew he was being impertinent—interrogating an overseer, questioning a _lord_ —but the rising tide of panic made him reckless.

“Lord d'Argent?” He heard his voice break. “He's not – Lord d'Argent isn't keeping me?”

“Of course not,” said Aquila. “He is to give you to His Majesty tonight as a birthday present. You will dance most beautifully, I'm told. And if you do not—” Aquila's lips curved in a smirk. “Well, you may have heard that His Majesty has the most celebrated menagerie of exotic animals in all the Isles. They fight for him in his arena. Beast against beast; beast against man. Or boy. The Court is always hungry for new entertainment.” Then, thoughtfully: “I don't suppose His Majesty has ever seen a dancer fight.”

Dread clenched a cold fist around Luca's heart. This was like the nightmares where he ran to Robert only to reach him and discover it wasn't Robert at all, but the Commissar or the Pig or Master Trainer or some other faceless monster who would do horrible things to him until Luca woke up screaming. He couldn't stop himself from recalling all the stories about the King's arena, how His Majesty would throw in criminals or bothersome courtiers and watch them fight his pet monsters to the death. They said there was a lake of blood under the Summer Palace where all the mess from the arena drained down. An image came to Luca unbidden of his mutilated body drowning in a brackish sea of gore. Then the body became Asher's, eyes empty, face gray with death. Luca had to blink back the sting of tears.

“Not to worry,” said Aquila, patting his shoulder. “Lord d'Argent has every confidence that you'll perform admirably.”

Somehow Luca found this rather less than reassuring.

 

***

 

Tolliver took an almost indecent amount of glee in readying Robert for the evening. He ignored Robert's protests that he'd only just showered yesterday and insisted that he wash again, this time with a block of soap that looked and smelled like congealed oatmeal and left his skin almost as soft as Luca's. Tolliver shaved Robert himself. Once Robert's neck and chin were smoother than fine china Tolliver summoned a brace of lackeys, each carrying a different suit of clothes. Tolliver hemmed and hawed, finally selecting a white brocade doublet, leather jerkin, and black breeches shot with silver thread. These he paired with a green half-cape fastened across his chest with a chain of silver braid.

“You're enjoying this,” Robert accused.

“It pleases me to see sir outfitted in a manner which befits his status,” said Tolliver serenely. “I don't suppose sir has ever considered hiring a manservant of his own?”

“Ask Grandfather,” Robert said. “He's the one withholding my allowance.”

“I am sure my lord would consider it a worthwhile investment.” Tolliver stepped back and ran a critical eye over Robert. “Particularly given the results.”

Robert opened his mouth to make a remark about sow's ears and silk purses. Then he caught sight of himself in the mirror. The words died on his lips. He looked… _good_. No, scratch that. He looked fucking incredible. The doublet emphasized the cut V of his torso while the breeches made his legs appear long and muscular, completely unlike the scrawny beanpoles Robert was used to walking around on. The color of the cape made his eyes blaze sterling and his hair seem a dark and shining russet. Absent the five-o'clock shadow his jaw was sharp, cheekbones high, nose a straight knife's edge. It was nearly enough to make Robert wish Luca would be at the Summer Palace tonight to see how well he cleaned up.

“Sir may find my methods objectionable, but you cannot argue with the results,” said Tolliver smugly.

“I'll never argue with you again,” Robert vowed.

Tolliver gave a polite snort of disbelief.

 

By the time Robert arrived at the Summer Palace he was, as usual, late. The festivities were not being held in a ballroom this time; the Palace was too small to contain them. Instead the doors had been flung open to the vast gardens overlooking the sea.

It took Robert's eyes several moments to adjust to the riot of color and noise below him, and when they did it took him several more moments to assure himself that he had not stumbled into some mad dream. The gardens had been transformed into a carnival more decadent than any Bacchanal. Gladiators fought in arenas sunk deep into the earth; guests craned over the side, cheering whenever the struggle sent up a spray of blood. Chariots thundered across the grounds, each one marshaled by a whooping young noble and pulled by a brace of white horses with rolling eyes and foam-flecked nostrils. There were other, stranger races as well: zebra against stallion, antelope against wildcat, a human runner against five brown rabbits. There were clowns with garish facepaint, contortionists who pretzeled themselves into impossible shapes, and aerialists who coiled their bodies around bolts of silk.

A sweaty fire-eater burped flame in Robert's direction. He took this as a hint to keep moving.

Acrobats dressed like birds performed on tightrope and trapeze, soaring over a pit of spikes. Robert did not look to see if there were feathered bodies already speared below. Instead he wandered through a zoo of slaves all costumed to imitate the King's menagerie. Robert saw a child outfitted with a hunt-hound's ears and tail weeping as she was dragged along on a leash by laughing guests. He looked away.

A many-legged papier-mâché dragon danced through the crowd, blocking Robert's path. He caught sight of Estelle standing with a clique of courtiers and ducked behind a fountain. Too late; he'd been spotted. Estelle made an exaggerated moue of surprise and beckoned him over. Robert seriously considered making a break for it, but the dragon barred the only way of escape that did not involve circling around the gladiator pits or doubling back through the human zoo. He trudged over to Estelle like a man condemned.

“My lord d'Argent,” said Estelle, dipping a curtsy. “What a pleasant surprise.”

Robert bowed. “My lady.”

Estelle made introductions which Robert didn't bother paying attention to. He smiled and bowed, smiled and bowed, until Estelle was finished.

“We were about to make our way over to the royal barge, my lord,” said Estelle. She placed a hand on his arm. “Will you join us?”

An excuse was on the tip of Robert's tongue. Then he realized to his dismay that Grandfather would be wherever the King was.

“Of course,” Robert said through his teeth. “Delighted to.”

The royal barge floated on a manmade lagoon in the center of the garden. Their group was obliged to pile into a painted skiff poled along by a slave in order to reach it. Estelle made a production of seasickness in order to lean over Robert's lap, bosom heaving theatrically. He tried not to roll his eyes. It was difficult.

The barge itself was less a boat and more a floating palazzo. Gleaming from stem to stern with gilt and encrusted with precious gems, it was a miracle the thing didn't sink under its own weight. The prow was a massive lion's head hewn from gold with diamond eyes and snarling ivory teeth; banners fluttered from the sides, each blazoned with the King's crest in gold thread.

Liveried servitors helped Robert and the other guests from the skiff. These were the only clothed slaves on board. The rest went naked but for jewelry worth at least as much as their bare, beautiful bodies. Robert remembered the dead-eyed whores at the Harlequin and felt a nausea that had nothing to do with seasickness.

Estelle took a glass of punch from a tray proffered by a slave with dark hair and pierced nipples. She didn't look at the girl; her gaze roved instead across the chattering crush of courtiers, no doubt evaluating who was and was not in attendance. Indeed, the only people looking at the slaves did so either with the same amused curiosity with which they surveyed the peacocks roosting on the cupola or else with a certain unwholesome interest that promised groping, or worse, should the unfortunate servitor come within arms' reach. If Robert listened he thought he could heard small noises coming from the darker corners of the barge. He caught sight of the flap of someone's trousers, unbuttoned, and an arm outflung on the deck, hand clenching as if in rhythm to a thrust. Robert took a glass of punch and drank it down in a gulp.

“I'm sorry, but I really must find my grandfather,” he told Estelle. “Family business, you know.”

Estelle smiled, showing her sharp little teeth. “Of course,” she said. “In fact, I saw my lord not a moment ago – ducking into the King's pagoda, I believe.”

Robert bit back a groan. Of _course_.

The King's pagoda sat on a high dais at the stern of the barge. There were guards on every step. When Robert approached, they crossed their spears to bar his entrance. Though the hafts of their spears were decorated with ivy wreaths, the points were cold, businesslike iron.

“I'm Robert d'Argent,” said Robert nervously. “My grandfather is inside. He's the King's Chief Adviser,” he added, and immediately felt like a wanker.

After a moment the spears parted, and for the second time Robert found himself climbing stairs he didn't want to climb in order to face a man he didn't want to see.

Inside, the King's pagoda was dim, the air thick and fragrant with the smell of incense. Transluscent silk panels divided the space into rooms. Some 'walls' were silks layered thickly, their opacity providing discretion. Here the slaves were all male and all showed obvious signs of handling. A swollen mouth, tousled hair, the outline of a red handprint on a white rump. When had Robert started noticing slaves? Now that he had begun, he found himself unable to look away. It didn't help that so many of the slaves were blond. Robert realized to his disgust that the King shared his taste in boys.

“Do mine eyes decieve me, or is that Robert d'Argent?”

Robert turned to see Lord Fontaine approaching him. He looked the man over without thinking, checking him for blush or breathlessness, signs that he had just come from disporting himself in one of the opaque rooms.

“Are you all right, young man?” asked Fontaine when Robert didn't reply.

Robert shook himself. There was no _time_ for this. Had he forgotten Professor Gregory, locked behind the black walls of Hasty Gaol? If Grandfather was dangling the Professor like a carrot, that must mean he could get him out. It _must._

“I need to speak to my grandfather,” Robert said. “Have you seen him?”

“He's with the King, of course,” replied Fontaine. “In fact, I believe it will soon be time for His Majesty to recieve his gifts. Lord d'Argent has been especially close-mouthed about his offering, and he's spent the evening looking like the cat that's got the cream. We're all intrigued. Have you any idea – ?”

“No.”

“Ah.” Lord Fontaine looked disappointed. “Well, follow me. We shall sate our curiosity together.”

He led Robert through narrow, smokey corridors. Slaves passed carrying trays of exotic hors d'oeuvres. Lord Fontaine stopped to sample an octopus tart and Robert took the opportunity to grab a glass of wine. He made an effort to catch the server's eye as he did so, trying to apologize for – well, everything – but the boy kept his gaze cast determinedly at the floor.

The King's chamber was also guarded, but this time the spears parted without question. The King sat on his throne, surrounded by courtiers, with the lion at his feet and the monkey on his shoulder. His tunic and breeches were embroidered with some trompe l'oeil effect to resemble a full suit of armor. The effect was so good that Robert wondered for a moment how the King could lounge so casually wearing plate metal.

The King's juggler was tossing and catching dozens of small knives, a job no doubt made difficult by all the sweat pouring down his forehead. The King watched with an expression of acute boredom. When he saw Robert, his face brightened.

“Robert d'Argent!” the King cried, waving the juggler away. “What admirable timing! Your dear Grandpapa was about to unveil his gift.”

Grandfather stepped forward. He was wearing a strange little grimace that Robert would have called a smile if he didn't know better. When he spoke, his tone was jauntier than Robert had ever heard it. He almost sounded cheerful.

“Truly, my liege, this was a difficult task,” said Grandfather with a theatrical sigh. “What does one get the man who has everything?”

The courtiers tittered. The King slapped the arm of his throne and let out a loud guffaw. Robert blinked. Had Grandfather just made a _joke_? Something very strange was going on.

“As Your Majesty is no doubt aware, your birthday week coincides with the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Lyonesse and the coronation of your royal father, may his memory live forever in our hearts.” Grandfather had slipped into the monotonous drone Robert associated with a lecture.

“I hope your present isn't a history lesson, Old Bob!” the King shouted, much to the mirth of his courtiers.

Undaunted, Grandfather continued, “Fifty years ago this very week, Majesty, the LeRoy line ascended to the throne, ensuring that Lyonesse will enjoy a state of peace and prosperity until the twilight of the world. The fiftieth is, of course, the _golden_ anniversary.” His lips twitched. “What better tribute could I offer to honor my king on this most auspicious of days than a piece of gold?”

“Only a piece?” the King pouted.

“Ah, but a piece of unusual beauty, Majesty,” said Grandfather smoothly. “I am sure you will not be disappointed.” He stepped to the side, arm outswept. “May I present – the Golden Bird!”

Behind him the curtains parted. A slave stepped forward. His bare body shone with gilt paint. His hair was a laurel of thick aureate curls. He wore a collar wrought of gold.

Oh, gods. It was Luca.


	28. Chapter 28

 

Robert's vision doubled. One pair of eyes beheld a slave with a lithe, supple body and a face more beautiful than any dream. With the other pair Robert saw Luca, white with fear and quivering all over like a plucked string. He wanted to take Luca in his arms and carry him out of this gleaming, bloody world, away from the men who looked at him with the greed of predators. Robert stepped forward without thinking. Grandfather was at his side in an instant, gripping his arm with a hand like iron. 

“Make one move and I will see to it that your whore dies by inches.”

Robert froze. 

The orchestra struck a note. Luca raised his arms and canted his hip. He moved fluidly – like air, water, like the bright, sharp flicker of a living flame. The King leaned forward on his throne. For once he did not fidget or drum his heels, but watched, wholly rapt. Fear seized Robert's throat. He felt the prick of nails digging into his palms and realized that he was clenching his fists so hard his knuckles had gone white. He didn't move. He didn't move so carefully he thought it might kill him.

The dance ended with Luca prostrate before the King, forehead to the ground and arms extended, palm-up. The Court broke into applause, as genuine as Robert had ever heard it. The King bounced in his seat, beaming.

“Again!” he cried. “My Golden Bird shall dance for me again.”

The orchestra swelled to life and Luca rose in one graceful movement. Robert bit his tongue to keep himself from screaming.

“Come, my son,” said Grandfather's voice in his ear.

He steered Robert out of the pagoda, down the steps and across the deck. Robert let him. The world was filmed over with a fog of despair. A skiff pulled up alongside the barge and they climbed aboard, Grandfather guiding Robert like a child. He sat Robert down at the prow and lowered himself onto the bench across from him.

“How did you know?” Robert asked dully.

“You all but told me yourself,” said Grandfather. “Or did you really think I would believe that you wanted to join the Church?”

It took a moment for Robert to understand. When he did, he felt as though he had been struck. “You're Boq's contact.”

“Of course,” said Grandfather, as if it were obvious. “Whores make excellent informants. All the best brothels in Paradiso report to me.”

“Then deBorse isn't the King's spymaster,” said Robert slowly. “You are.”

Grandfather inclined his head. 

Robert gestured to the silent slave poling the skiff. “We should speak in private, don't you think?”

“Open your mouth, slave,” Grandfather ordered without looking up.

The slave obeyed. His tongue was a blackened stump. Robert felt ill. 

“I see you've taken care of everything.” He meant to sound flip, but even he could hear the strain of it. 

Grandfather's mouth turned up at the corners. It was nothing like a smile.

“Why?” Robert's voice broke. “Why, Grandfather?”

“Because you fancied yourself in love,” said Grandfather disgustedly. “To think I was pleased when your cousin brought you to that godsforsaken brothel! Even a prostitute would make a more appropriate bedfellow than the social-climbing son of a merchant parvenu. Imagine my consternation when I discovered that you had taken a sizeable loan from Lord Grossvenor, sold your swords, and solicited a fence for your regalia – all in order to buy some painted barbarian pleasure-slave!”

Robert blinked. “How—”

“Don't insult me, Robert,” Grandfather sniffed. “What sort of guardian would I be if I didn't take measures to oversee my ward's activities at all times?”

Robert found himself speechless with indignation. When he regained his voice it was a squawk like an angry parakeet. “You had me spied on!”

“I've had you spied on since you were a child,” said Grandfather with a wave of his hand. “How else would I know that this Paradiso slut was the same boy you tried to hang yourself over all those years ago?”

“You knew about Luca,” Robert said through gritted teeth. “All this time, you knew?”

“Luca Slaveborn, aged approximately eighteen, a barbarian of the Skua tribe, hailing from the Northern Ridge,” Grandfather said in a bored tone. “Also known as Babydoll, Goldilocks, Pretty, and, most recently, the Golden Bird. Should I take my informers at their word, your whore is something of a celebrity in Paradiso. His owner was certainly reluctant to part with him, but I was...insistent.”

Robert could imagine just how insistent Grandfather would have been. “Why did you give him to the King?” Robert fought to keep his tone even. “Was it simply to – to punish me?”

Grandfather folded his hands over the head of his cane. His eyes were as cold as silver coins. “I gave him to the King so that every time you see the boy kneeling at his feet, within reach but forever outside your grasp, he will serve as an object lesson in the high price of disobedience.”

Robert's mouth went dry. He had a vision of of the King keeping Luca chained to his throne like a pet and felt his gorge rise. _No_. Gods, no. Robert couldn't bear it. He would go mad. They had to run, _now_ , run until they reached someplace safe, far away from Gregory's conspiracies and Grandfather's machinations and the King's blithe insanity, where Luca would never be hurt and Robert would never be made to watch, a new world where they could make a life together—

“Oh, dear. Are you thinking about spiriting him away?” Grandfather's tone was amused. “I suppose your whore hasn't told you what happens to fugitive slaves once they're caught. And I assure you, my son, you _will_ be caught. My arm is long. I have eyes and ears from Iberia to the Bronze Coast.” He leaned forward, lips pulled back over his teeth. “There are many ways to keep a body alive long after the will is broken, Robert. I will use every single one of them on your whore. Then I will allow you to choose whether you wish to continue his suffering or grant him a quick and merciful death at your own hand.”

Robert leaned over the side of the skiff and vomited into the King's lagoon. Grandfather watched, expression implacable. 

“Now,” he said when Robert was finished. “I believe you wanted to talk to me about Maximus Gregory?”

Robert spat bile at his feet. “You evil motherfucker.”

Grandfather slapped him. It wasn't a hard slap, nothing on what Maman's pimp used to deal out, but it was enough sprawl Robert back on the bench with a split lip. He put his hand to his mouth. It came away smeared with blood. It took Robert a long moment to comprehend that it was Grandfather who had caused that sharp, clear pain. 

“I would advise you not to forget that your whore is still well within my power, Robert,” Grandfather said calmly. “What a delicate boy he is. Limbs like glass. I expect they break as easily.”

Robert swallowed. He flicked his gaze to the slave poling the skiff through the water. If Robert had learned anything, it was that Grandfather made good on his threats.

“Now, where were we? Ah, yes, your treasonous professor.” Grandfather cleared his throat. “As you know, Maximus Gregory is currently under the hospitality of Hasty Gaol. Where he goes from here is entirely up to you. Should you behave yourself, I see no reason why he should not enjoy a single cell in a quiet block with polite, accommodating guards and three square meals a day.” He snorted. “Given the pittance they pay professors at College, the man will doubtless be thrilled by the improvement in his living conditions.”

“And if I don't?” Robert croaked. “Behave myself, that is.”

“Gregory will be shipped to Abysm and put to torture,” said Grandfather with a shrug. “He will give up many names, among them those of your friends Valerian Fourteys and Barnabas Comstalk. Then, if he is still alive afterward, he will be hanged, drawn and quartered in Capitol Square as a lesson to the rabble.”

Robert felt a chill run down his spine. “Val and Barnabas have nothing to do with this.”

“Really, my son, your lies grow tiresome,” Grandfather sighed. “There is enough insurrectionary material in the Falcon's pages to see all of you sent to the gallows.”

Robert closed his eyes. “Ah. So you know about that, too.”

“It would go better for you if you simply assume I know everything,” said Grandfather, almost kindly. “Behave yourself and your friends will be safe.”

“Behave myself.” Robert laughed, a little hysterically. “I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific, Grandfather. Your idea of good behavior has proved to be very different from mine.”

Grandfather's nostrils flared. “You will withdraw from that hotbed of sedition they call a College, thus freeing you to make regular attendance at Court.”

Robert's laugh became strangled. “Oh, is that all?”

“And you will court Estelle Fontaine.”

Robert rubbed his hands over his face. “Do you know, Grandfather, I count three sticks and not a single carrot.”

Grandfather raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

“You haven't given me an incentive for obedience, only deterrents from misbehavior.”

“Ah.” Grandfather's lips thinned. “What do you want?”

Robert tried to remember precisely what Luca had told him at the Harlequin. He could only make this request once. “There's a boy at the Harlequin, a debt-slave named Asher. I want you to purchase his contract and set him free.”

“You're asking me to buy you a whore?” Grandfather sounded shocked.

“You did take mine away,” Robert pointed out. “It seems only fair.”

“Hm.” Grandfather tipped his head, considering. “And in exchange?”

Robert thought of Luca prostrating himself before the King. He put his hands on his knees, palm-up in supplication. “I will be everything you've always wanted me to be,” he replied. “The perfect heir. I swear this on my life.”

Grandfather sniffed. “I've seen you demonstrate your disregard for _that_ too often to take the promise seriously, my son.”

“On Professor Gregory's life, then. On my friends' lives.” He swallowed. “On Luca's life.”

Grandfather surveyed Robert, eyes bright and sly as a magpie's. Robert saw for the first time how very alike they looked. It was as if he were gazing into a mirror and seeing himself grown old and bitter and twisted with disappointment.

“Now that,” said Grandfather quietly, “ _that_ I do believe.”


	29. Chapter 29

 

Luca was afraid. It was like ice, the fear, freezing him from the inside so that he couldn't think, couldn't breathe. He hadn't been this scared in years, not since the overseers brought him to the Comissar's bed. Luca had wanted to die when the Comissar tore him open the first time. Now, with death breathing down his neck, Luca realized how very badly he wanted to live.

The King made Luca dance until he was on the brink of collapse. Luca forced his exhausted body to comply. He tried to move as Bagoas had taught him, as though there was no pain, no men watching him with eyes that burned like the brand against his skin. Robert's face appeared in Luca's mind, whispering _I love you._ Luca pushed it away. If he dwelt on Robert now he would lose what little control he had left. He would crumple to the floor and sob like a child. Then the King would throw him into the arena for sure.

As Luca forced himself through the endless dance, he snuck glimpses of his new master. The King had a round pink face like a boy's, though there were iron-gray streaks in his dark hair; he moved like a boy as well, tapping his foot, snapping his fingers, jigging with restless energy. He drank goblets of wine, teased the monkey, kicked the lion, and ordered the orchestra to play faster, faster, until Luca thought he would fly apart. 

Finally the King sank back in his throne and made a curt gesture with his hand. The music lurched to a stop. Luca fell to his knees, flattening himself against the ground the way Aquila had instructed him. The King said something, but the pounding in Luca's ears drowned out the words. Then strong hands bundled him up like a parcel and bore him away. Luca's last thought before he passed out was that he hoped the monsters would kill him quickly.

  
  


Luca was conscious enough by the time they reached Aquila to take in his surroundings through half-lidded eyes. _This is the Summer Palace,_ he told himself. Nowhere else could possibly be this beautiful. Luca remembered showing Asher the Palace through the window and wanted to laugh, though there was nothing funny—except, perhaps, himself, a slave dripping sweat all over a floor worth ten times what he was.

Luca was put down in front of Aquila. “Still alive, I see,” Aquila said approvingly. “You must've done well.”

“His Majesty wants the boy in his chambers tonight,” said the guard who had carried Luca. “Best scrub him down first.”

Aquila did nothing so crass as to roll his eyes, but made it clear the urge to was strong. “As though I would send a boy to His Majesty's bed looking like _this_.”

Luca was taken to a different bathhouse this time, one with red skylights that made the steam a hazy pink and whales around the baths instead of tigers. Luca wasn't able to tell if the attendants were the same three who had prepared him before: they were equally sexless and silent. Luca couldn't help wondering whether they had been scoured and polished like this once themselves. Had they ever been made ready to share the King's bed? Luca looked at their blank faces and decided that he didn't want to know.

Luca had been so saturated in luxury over the last several hours that he didn't think anything else in the Palace could impress him. The King's chambers proved him wrong. The floor was a pattern of marble, porcelain, and dark wood that had Luca treading on tiptoe; the walls were upholstered with panels of jewel-colored embroidery. The domed ceiling showed a frieze of heaven, milky sky swirling into the purple fog of night. Sun and stars were picked out in gold and precious gems.

The King's bed stood at the center of the room on a raised stage. It was as big as a boat, plush with exotic skins and furs. A marble pillar stood at each corner, wider than the circle of a tall man's arms. The opalescent curtains drawn around the sides made Luca think suddenly, inexplicably, of white bandages. He should've traded himself to Sark for more medical supplies, a doctor even, Asher had still been alive, perhaps there would've been time—

“Kneel here,” said Aquila, pushing Luca to the foot of the bed. His knees hit the floor and he let the sharp pain jolt Asher out of his mind.

Luca was left to kneel for what felt like hours. Here, as in the bathhouse, there were ranks of slaves standing against the walls, as well as free servants and guards. None of them moved or spoke. Luca watched from under his lashes as a mosquito landed on a guard's arm, drank its fill, and flew away, all without the man so much as twitching a muscle. Luca wondered if he would be required to stay so perfectly still when the King fucked him. He remembered the games Master Trainer and later the Pig had liked to play: testing Luca's obedience by leaving him unbound when they hurt him and forbidding him to move or make a sound. He still had full moon-shaped scars from when he was ordered to hold his hands out and level while cigarettes were stubbed out on his palms. Luca traced the faded circles and prayed to the Goddess, Ganymene, _anyone_ , that the King didn't like to make his whores cry.

By the time the King burst into his bedroom Luca had worked himself into such a state that he very nearly threw up. He bent over, head between his knees, and hoped the genuflection looked like a graceful bow and not the gesture of someone about to lose their lunch.

Fortunately the King ignored Luca completely. He bounded around the room, roaring nonsense at the top of his lungs. A crowd of courtiers hurried after him, all wearing expressions of forbearance that showed varying degrees of wear. Luca watched through his hair with a sort of horrified fascination as the King squatted over a chamberpot proferred by a waiting slave and relieved himself in front of at least a dozen nobles. Once he was finished, servants rushed forward with an array of nightclothes. The King waved them away, instead beckoning over a waiting cup-bearer. He took the cup and drank a deep draught of wine that drizzled down his beard and filled the room with a strange, sharp smell. When the cup was empty, he threw it against the wall.

“Where is my pretty gift?” the King bellowed.

Luca realized that the King was referring to him. He crawled forward, careful to keep his back arched, ass up, head lower than the King's knee. When he reached the man's foot he sat back on his heels, hands in an anxious knot behind him.

The King carded his fingers gently through Luca's hair, then grabbed a handful and yanked him to his feet in one rough movement. Luca bit back a gasp, more of shock than pain. The King kept his fist tangled in Luca's hair, making him stand on tiptoe. Surely he could feel how Luca was shaking? Terror sent seismic tremors through him. He had to clench his teeth so that they wouldn't chatter.

“So pretty,” the King crooned, stroking Luca's face with his knuckle. “My Golden Bird. Isn't it the prettiest present you've ever seen?”

There was a murmured chorus of consent from the nobles.

“I'm going to fuck my present now,” announced the King.

For the next few hours, that's exactly what he did. Not even Captain Sprottle could've rivaled the King in energy and inventiveness. He bent Luca into increasingly difficult positions, posing him like a doll. Luca responded with all the skill he could muster. The King's cock was thin, but long; Luca had to school himself not to wince when it ploughed at wrong angles into deep, tender parts of him. He kept silent as a servitor until the King, annoyed, ordered him to moan like the pretty little slut he was. Luca moaned loudly, softly, sweetly, wetly, breathlessly, diligently and eagerly until the King's hips stuttered and he came.

“ _Good_ slut!” the King cried, giving Luca a hearty slap on the buttock.

He pulled out, cock glistening and, to Luca's horror, still erect. The King leaped away from the bed, calling for wine, food, music. Luca was left on his fours over the bed. Should he let himself drop to the ground and crawl discreetly away? Aquila hadn't said. Luca dug his fingers into the furs, desperate with uncertainty. Certainly His Majesty wouldn't want to keep a slave in his bed after finishing with him – but _was_ he finished with Luca? He was still hard, after all, cock bouncing merrily between his legs as he sprang about the room and shouted at his courtiers. 

Luca flexed his cramping thigh and immediately received a slight shake of the head from the nearest guard. So he was to stay put, then. Luca arranged himself as the King had left him and waited.

He was glad he did. Once the King had turned over a couch and thrown a vase at one of his advisers for no apparent reason, he came bounding back to the bed and slammed into Luca without preamble. After several minutes of being fucked hard in the same position, Luca realized that the King was going for depth and speed this time, not creativity. He arched his back to allow the cock inside to penetrate deeper and braced himself on the headboard. The King picked up his pace, snarling encouragement in Luca's ear. Luca chanced a whimper and was rewarded with a throaty groan. The King yanked Luca's head up, bowing his spine, and spilled his second orgasm of the night into Luca's ass. He didn't lose a millimeter of his erection. This time Luca knew better than to move.

A servitor brought a tray heaped with more food than Luca had ever seen in one place before. His stomach reminded him that it had been almost a full day since he'd last eaten. The King sat cross-legged on the bed while he used the kneeling servitor for his table. He ate as ravenously as he fucked, and by the time the plate was empty his mouth and beard were flecked with sauce, cream, and bits of meat. Luca found himself hoping that the King would kiss him just so he could lick a meal from his lips.

The King did not kiss him. Instead he had Luca ride him while he lay back and groped every part of him he could reach. The King squeezed his thighs, traced the ridge of his ribs, fondled his balls, tugged his prick, and yanked and twisted his nipples. He pulled Luca's asscheeks apart and pushed them together, groaning at the friction. He felt for Luca's hole with his fingers, pinched and plucked at the rim. When he shoved a finger in alongside his cock Luca was ready for it. He bore down, undulating his hips in a slow circle. The King bucked up and came.

Luca was certain that the King would be through with him now. Three orgasms must've been enough to wring him dry. But no, when the King pulled out his cock was still as hard as if he'd never come. Luca wanted to cry.

The King threw Luca down on the bed and positioned him on his hands and knees. Luca felt fingertips pressing against his entrance and for a moment did not understand. When he did, it took all his self-control not to scream. The King pushed his hand forward and Luca felt himself stretched open horribly, alarmingly wide even before the first knuckle. The King's fist more than made up for his cock in breadth. Luca buried his face in the furs as the hand moved further and further inside of him. There was a burning flare of pain, and the King slid in past his thumb. When Luca felt his anus contract around the King's wrist he swallowed convulsively, trying not to be sick. 

The King started thrusting shallowly. Luca was shaking – had never stopped, really, but while before it was from fear, now it was due to the agony that ripped through him every time the King rolled his hand. Exhaustion threatened to eclipse him. With each thrust forward Luca prayed that he wouldn't tear and each drag out had him wishing that Aquila had given him a ring of salts. He hung on to the ragged edge of consciousness and endured.

Finally Luca felt the warm spatter of cum across his back. The King dragged his cock over Luca's ass with the hand not currently inside of it. Luca almost sobbed with relief when he felt the King soften against him.

“So good,” the King sighed. “Good present.”

Luca felt a surge of happiness. He had pleased his master. His master thought he was good.

When the King pulled his hand out Luca could not help the tiny, bitten-off noise that escaped him. The King chuckled and smacked his cheek, leaving a sticky handprint. Then he shoved Luca unceremoniously to the floor. 

“Take my present away,” he announced. “I'm finished with it.”

A side door opened and a guard gestured Luca through. He crawled backwards, aching, semen oozing down his thighs. The door closed on the King jumping up and down on his bed and bellowing for someone to entertain him.

  
  


 


	30. Chapter 30

Robert had not expected withdrawing from College to feel so much like pulling out his own teeth. After finalizing the matter with the gleeful Bursar, Robert trudged to the flat to collect his things. Val and Hugo were kept sequestered in their rooms by Grandfather's men, no doubt with the idea that they couldn't corrupt Robert if they weren't allowed to speak to him. Robert was sorry. He would've liked to say goodbye.

Robert was surprised and somewhat disturbed by how little he had to pack. Clothes, fencing equipment, his papers. All the detritus of a student's life. He left his books for Val.

Tolliver was waiting for Robert in the carriage. He nodded approvingly at Robert's single suitcase. “I see sir has packed light.”

“I don't own much,” Robert said, surprised to find it was true. “Actually, I don't suppose I own anything. It all belongs to Grandfather, really.” He looked out the window at the flat disappearing behind them. “Myself included.”

“I thought no free man could stand the bondage of unfair rule as long as he has the will to oppose it?”

Robert startled; the quote was his, writen as the Falcon. Then he groaned. “Don't tell me you're one of Grandfather's agents?”

“Dear me, no,” Tolliver said mildly. “I serve quite a different master.”

Robert opened his mouth to make some flip remark. Then the full weight of Tolliver's words hit him. He closed his mouth. The carriage rattled down the boulevards and past the Consecration as Robert sorted through the past five years and reviewed them in this strange new light. It all began to make an awful sort of sense.

“The day I found you drinking tea at the flat,” said Robert finally. “Val was shaking in his boots. At the time I thought it was because you work for Grandfather.”

“And now?” said Tolliver.

Robert met his eyes. “Now I think it's because Val was working for you.”

Tolliver's smile was far too much like Grandfather's for Robert's comfort.

“You're the man Professor Gregory wanted me to meet,” said Robert, putting the pieces together. “He was working for you as well. Was it always your intention to solicit the son of a Council Lord to write for the Falcon?”

“Gregory's instructions were to select his brightest and most promising students,” Tolliver replied. “But I must admit, him choosing you was something of a coup.”

“Your master is Philip of Guye,” said Robert, and even before Tolliver beamed he knew he'd got it right.

“Well _done_ , Robert. I was afraid I was going to have to lead you there by the hand.”

Robert felt the hot flush of anger rise up his neck. “Why didn't you stop Professor Gregory's arrest, then?” he demanded.

“It was out of my hands.” Tolliver spread them to demonstrate. “Your Grandfather is one of the most powerful men in Lyonesse, Robert. I may be the arm of the _true_ King, but Lord d'Argent is Eustace's fist. When he wants a man in jail, that man stays jailed.”

“But – but the King _laughs_ at Grandfather,” Robert said. “He calls him Old Bob!”

“The King keeps a pet lion on a leash,” Tolliver pointed out.

“Literally and figuratively, it would seem,” Robert muttered. “Anyway, why are you telling me all this now? First Grandfather reveals that he's the King's spymaster, now you go and announce that you're secretly in the employ of the Exile. Did you all get together and decide to blindside me at once or something?”

To his shock, Tolliver laughed. “I had intended to speak with you months ago, but it seems you have rather a talent for evasion. You can't think this is my preferred method of recruitment.”

Robert remembered Professor Gregory's repeated attempts to introduce Robert to his shadowy handler and had to concede that this was so.

“Besides, I never anticipated that Lord d'Argent would make such a decisive checkmate,” Tolliver continued. “An oversight on my part. I should know by now just how far he's willing to go to protect his heir.”

Something in his voice made Robert uneasy. “What do you mean?”

Tolliver raised his eyebrows. “Have you honestly never questioned the extraordinary coincidence that everyone who knew you as Robert Carpenter died within a month of Lord d'Argent adopting you?”

Robert thought of Maman found swinging from a rafter, Gran and Lord Frederick's household felled by a mysterious illness that no doctor could cure. When he spoke, his voice sounded as though it were echoing down a long tunnel. “You're saying he killed them.”

“Had them killed.” Tolliver shrugged. “It amounts to the same thing.”

“Maman hanged herself,” said Robert hoarsely.

“She was hanged.”

“There was a fever—”

“Poison.”

Robert's mouth was as dry as grave dirt. He licked his lips convulsively. “How – how do I know you're not just saying this to get me on your side?”

“You're already on my side,” Tolliver pointed out.

Robert snorted. “You seriously overestimate how much danger I'm willing to brave in order to serve the cause.”

“If you were that concerned with the danger, you never would have agreed to write for the Falcon,” said Tolliver. “Your history shows a remarkable willingness to take your life in your hands.”

“ _My_ life,” Robert retorted. “Not Luca's life.”

Tolliver lifted a brow. “Ah, yes. Your barbarian pleasure-slave.”

“ _Luca_ ,” Robert snapped. “His name is Luca.”

“You do realize that Lord d'Argent will see to it that you never so much as speak to the boy again?”

Robert closed his eyes against the pain of it. “I know.”

“Of course, Lord d'Argent's power to keep Luca from you depends upon Lord d'Argent retaining his current position of power in the royal administration.”

Robert opened his eyes, then narrowed them. “Your solution being to change the royal administration.”

“Precisely,” said Tolliver. “Once Philip takes his rightful place as King of Lyonesse, the boy will be given to you as a reward for your service.”

“What exactly will this service entail?” asked Robert, wary.

“Nothing you will find too burdensome,” said Tolliver. “I will convince Lord d'Argent that you need a manservant and suggest myself. You shall simply attend Court and report to me everything you have seen and heard.”

“You'll be my spymaster,” said Robert. The idea was so absurd he almost laughed aloud. “Well, it's an idea. Unfortunately for you, Grandfather got to me first, and he was rather too successful at convincing me he's omniscient for me to leap at the chance to commit high treason.”

“I've been Lord d'Argent's manservant for ten years,” Tolliver said. “I've spent those years building a network of agents at Court, and I myself have been in constant contact with King Philip and his operatives both here and in Guye. All this under your grandfather's nose. Believe me when I say that if I can protect myself, I can protect you and your – Luca.”

“You couldn't protect Professor Gregory,” Robert pointed out, folding his arms.

Tolliver sighed. “My influence is concentrated at the Palace, it's true. I did not anticipate it would be necessary to have men inside Hasty Gaol. As for the sphere in which you will operate, however, I have more than enough power to keep you safe. Besides,” he added, eyes opaque behind his glasses, “our plans for _you_ are far more important than they ever were for Gregory.”

Robert jerked back. “So I'm only of worth to you insofar as I am useful?”

“We are all of us only as worthy as we are useful,” said Tolliver with a shrug. “I would have thought you learned that lesson at your mother's knee, as it were.”

The reference to Maman stung. Robert scowled. “I want to see Luca,” he said, rather more petulantly than he meant to.

“That will be difficult,” Tolliver admitted.

“What about your alleged agents at the Palace?”

“It is _hardly_ that simple—”

“Look at this as a demonstration,” said Robert. “Earn my trust.”

Tolliver flared his nostrils. “Fine. I can only promise you one meeting, however.”

“Until your man is on the throne,” Robert reminded him. “Then Luca is mine.”

“Yours,” Tolliver promised. “You have my word.”

As the carriage rolled up the drive of House d'Argent, Robert could feel himself and Tolliver rearranging their postures, schooling their expressions, pulling back to the cool remove of master and servant. By the time Robert stepped out of the carriage, he was almost convinced that Tolliver was nothing but Grandfather's obnoxious valet.

A footman ran over, wig askew. He sketched a hasty bow. “My lord, your delivery has arrived.”

Robert frowned. “Delivery?”

“From Paradiso, my lord,” said the footman pointedly. “Lord d'Argent told us to put him in the carriage house.”

 

Robert could smell pain the moment he opened the carriage house door. The footmen had dumped Asher on a heap of feedsacks. His hands were tied, which seemed absurdly unnecessary given the fact that he was unconscious, covered in blood, radiating fever, and, upon further inspection, proved to have the most horrifically broken leg Robert had ever seen.

“Get a doctor,” Robert ordered the hovering footmen. “ _Now_.”

While waiting for the doctor to arrive, Robert had Asher moved to his rooms. Fortunately Grandfather was not at home to outright forbid it but the servants were hesitant nonetheless. Robert caught the glances they cast at each other which clearly communicated their consensus that the young master had finally gone completely mad. Robert didn't push the limits of their obedience by asking them to clean a Paradiso child-whore. Instead he sent for water and soap and set about washing away the worst of the blood and dirt himself.

The doctor was a plump little man named Barnes who had made brisk business for himself running house calls to incapacitated nobles. When he saw Asher, he balked. It took all of Robert's persuasion, and not a few threats, to convince Barnes to at the very least look the boy over. He assented reluctantly.

“A very nasty fall,” he pronounced after the cursory examination. “His knee is dislocated and the tibia is fractured in two places. He has also sustained two broken ribs in addition to the concussion. I must tell you, my lord, that even should the boy recover from these injuries, the cut on his face will scar badly and he will have a limp. His looks are quite ruined, I'm afraid. Now, I have all the tools with me for a humane euthanasia. It would be in my lord's best interests—”

“Don't tell me what my interests are,” Robert said quietly. “I have had quite enough of that for a lifetime.”

Barnes must have caught the note of danger in Robert's voice. He stuttered an apology. “Fix him,” said Robert, cutting Barnes off. “Do whatever it takes. Consider this engagement a blank check. If he dies, Lord d'Argent will see to it that you never work in Lyonesse again.”

The enthusiasm with which Barnes set about treating Asher was enough to convince Robert that being Lord d'Argent's grandson had its benefits after all. Unfortunately the feeling only lasted until Grandfather returned. When he discovered that Robert had not only taken a whore inside the house but engaged a doctor at unlimited expense on his behalf, Robert was rather afraid he would have an apoplexy. Fortunately, Grandfather's mood improved significantly upon seeing Robert's suitcase and learning that he had withdrawn from College.

“The whore can stay until his health improves,” said Grandfather magnanimously. “The moment he can walk, I want him sent straight back to whatever hole he crawled out of. And Robert?”

“Yes, Grandfather?”

“If you ever pull a stunt like this again, I will take you over my knee and beat you like a spoiled schoolboy.”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

Grandfather sniffed disapprovingly and rapped his cane. Robert looked at the old man who wore his own gray eyes and tried to imagine him a murderer. No, he decided. It wasn't possible. For all his conniving, Grandfather had only ever trying to do what he thought was best for Robert. He loved Robert, he _did._ He just had a singularly devious and abusive way of showing it. Grandfather might be a manipulative bastard, but he wasn't a murderer. Tolliver was wrong. He had to be.

 

Asher healed slowly. It was days before he woke, and then only for long enough to curse Robert with the entire dictionary of Lower District profanities before sliding back into unconsciousness. At least after that Robert could rouse Asher enough to get him to drink water and broth, though he snarled when anyone came near him. Still, Barnes said he was improving. The antibiotics had taken care of the infection; his bones and muscles were knitting as well as could be expected. Even the cut across his face was healing into a puckered red seam held together by a row of stitches. His leg was held rigid by plaster and a steel frame suspended from the ceiling by a pulley, an invention which Robert had been able to bully the servants into keeping a secret from Grandfather.

The adults in Robert's life never had much patience for ill or injured children. Maman used to lock him out of their rooms if he had so much as a runny nose, knowing too well that a sick whore was a whore who went hungry. Robert's scraped knees and black eyes went largely ignored. Gran at least had cleaned him up after every fight and gave him a noxious draft of herbs when he had the flu, but she didn't have time to play nursemaid, not when there was so much work to be done in the kitchen. It had been Luca who had sighed over his bruises, kissed his swollen knuckles, wiped the sweat from his forehead and sat by his bed telling him stories about gods and knights and sea monsters while he sniveled through the stomach flu.

Robert, remembering, tried to pay Luca back for that long-ago kindness by taking care of Asher. He changed the sheets and bandages himself, fed and bathed Asher, and held his clammy hand through the worst of the fever dreams. Robert became so used to thinking of Asher as a helpless patient that it was something of a shock when one day Asher opened his eyes and immediately demanded, “Who the fuck are _you?_ ”

“Robert d'Argent.” Then, when Asher's expression remained blank, “I – we have a mutual friend.”

“I don't have any friends. Except—oh.” Asher scowled. “You're Luca's lord.” A pause, and the scowl faded slightly. “He was always really happy after your visits.”

Robert swallowed. “Really?” He hoped Asher didn't hear the quiver in his voice.

Asher rolled his eyes. “Is Luca here?”

“No. He – I – my grandfather gave him to the King as a birthday present.”

“Oh,” said Asher, scratching his chin. “Well, that's fucked up.”

Robert was startled into a laugh. “You don't know the half of it.”

Asher licked his cracked lips. Then he said a rush, “You like to fuck boys?”

Robert blinked. “No. Well, yes. Not as young as you, though.”

Asher narrowed his eyes. “You going to keep me around until I'm old enough, then?”

“I wasn't planning on it.”

“No,” Asher said quietly. “I guess you don't screw cripples.”

The bitterness in his voice made Robert's chest ache. “I didn't have your debt paid off in order to have sex with you,” he said slowly, hoping the words would sink in this time.

“You paid my debt?” Asher blinked at him. “I'm free?”

Robert nodded. “I can show you the papers, if you like.”

“I don't – I mean, there's nothing I—” Asher gestured to his face, his leg. “I can't thank you like this. You wouldn't want me, anyway. I'm ugly now.” He sounded almost happy about it.

“As I've said repeatedly, I have no intention of sleeping with you,” said Robert, with what he hoped was a firm note of finality. He really didn't want to have to rehash this particular topic of conversation again. It did unpleasant things to his stomach.

“Loyal to Luca or something?” Asher sneered.

“Yes, actually,” Robert retorted. “Are you always this rude to your betters?”

“Yep,” said Asher cheerfully. “That's what got me sold. Just ask Luca.” His expression fell. “Oh, sorry. Guess you can't.”

“No. I can't.”Robert exhaled and changed the subject. “Listen, my grandfather has been fairly insistent upon your leaving the minute you've healed, but I talked to the cook and I think I can get you a job in her brother's wool shop. It's light work, room and board, and they've agreed to send you to a missionary school on the weekends. You could save your money and get yourself an apprenticeship when you're old enough. I don't know what you want to do, but I was thinking—”

“Wait,” Asher interrupted. “You're not going to let me go home?”

“You want to go back to your family?” said Robert, confused. “I thought they were the ones who sold you.”

“That wasn't Pa's fault! He got cheated over a horse, and then he had to borrow money from Strongarm Lazar to pay it off, and then Strongarm called in the loan too soon and my Ma was sick and we didn't have the money and—Look, I'll be fine, okay?” Asher sounded close to tears. “Just – just let me go home.”

“Of course,” said Robert, surprised. “I wasn't going to hold you against your will.”

“You wouldn't be the first,” Asher muttered.

Robert winced. He thought of the first time he'd seen Asher, cryingout onstage as the satyr humped his thigh. Gods, the boy wasn'tbut a few years older than Luca had been when Lord Frederick bought him. He was too young to sound so cold, so knowing.

“You're sweet on him, don't you?” said Asher, breaking into Robert's thoughts. “Luca, I mean.”

Robert felt his cheeks go red. “How did you know?”

Asher shrugged. “Your face when you talk about him. The way he looked every time after he'd seen you. I'm not stupid, you know.”

“Yes,” Robert said softly. “I love him very much.”

“Are you going to get him back from the King?” asked Asher.

Robert sighed. “I'm working on it.”


	31. Chapter 31

Luca had never been owned by a whorehouse as lavish as the King's seraglio. There were azure pools swimming with fish, braziers perfumed with incense, and erotic tapestries on the walls. Eunuch guards dressed in silk and hung with swords stood sentinel at every entrance. The slaves spent their time lounging on cushions like beautiful, pampered housecats.

Luca couldn't get used to how well they were treated. Meals were served three whole times a day, more than he 'd ever eaten in his life, and the food was even more delicious than the feasts he used to dream of when his master would lock him in the cellar to starve as a punishment. Luca still held a little back from every meal, squirreling pieces of bread and fruit away in hiding places around the seraglio. He couldn't be sure the King wouldn't grow tired of him and decide he wasn't worth feeding.

Luca quickly learned that obsolescence was every royal whore's worst nightmare. The King's last favorite, a boy named Neige with milk-white skin and ruby eyes, had tried to push Luca into an ornamental fountain on his first day. The seraglio had a similar system of rank to the Harlequin, only here it was unspoken. The atmosphere of competition was toxic, stifling. Boys eyed each other warily, rarely speaking and always on the lookout for some advantage that would win them the King's favor, if only for a night.

To his dismay, Luca found that he was universally hated. He was an unwelcome intruder into their well-ordered world, appearing out of nowhere and rising immediately to the coveted position of King's favorite. The other whores considered the honor entirely undeserved. When they weren't pointedly ignoring Luca they were sending him nasty looks or gossiping loudly in his direction. If Luca tried to talk to them they walked away.

Of course, Luca spent most of his time attending His Majesty. The King was insatiable. He liked to keep Luca at his feet throughout the day in case he was overtaken with the sudden urge to bend him over a table or throw him on his back or push his head into the royal crotch. Once the King had fucked Luca all through a meeting with the Ministers of Finance, thrusting in and out as they droned on about the state of the treasury. Luca had been used in public before, but never in front of such a disinterested audience.

The precious hours Luca had to himself were spent alone in an alcove by the pool, watching the fish swim in slow, lazy circles. There was one fish, white with a black mark on his forehead, who always swam close to the surface of the water. Luca thought of him as Smudge. Sometimes, if Luca was quick, he could touch a silky fin before Smudge flicked his tail and vanished under an ornamental rock. It was as close as Luca had come to making a friend.

Luca tried not to think of Asher and Robert. He tried not to think at all.

  
  


After two weeks in the seraglio, Luca was taken to the forge that stood between the stables and the servant's quarters. The smith was already heading the branding iron in the fire. Luca knew then what was going to happen. He was strapped to a table stained with piss and a gag was shoved between his teeth. It tasted rank, like bile. Luca forbid himself from making noise. For a moment when the brand pressed between his shoulders he thought he'd manage it. Then the burn cut through him, and his scream rounded out a world made sharp-edged by pain.

They did the piercings after, when Luca was still limp and loose-limbed from shock. He barely felt the sharp pinch in each nipple. When they pushed the heavy gold rings through, he watched a bead of blood roll down his chest as though it came from someone else. Then he was turned over, his legs spread, and there was another pinch, this one far more acute. A third gold ring was threaded through his perineum. “Very nice,” said the smith, and Luca wanted to die.

The King didn't send for him for a few days. Luca spent them lying on his front by the pool, writing letters to Robert on the water with his fingertip.  _I'm sorry_ , he wrote, and  _I couldn't stop them. Please don't hate me_. The brand was a constant weight between his shoulders. He caught a glimpse of it in the bathhouse mirrors: a fleur-de-lis the size of a coin. The royal mark. Luca felt as though his stomach had turned to stone. He stopped eating and watched himself go thin with a kind of morbid detachment.

The first time the King fucked him after, he kept Luca on his knees the whole night. “Mine,” he purred, thrusting inside. “Mine.” He spattered his cum on the still-healing brand and Luca almost fainted from the pain. All he could think was that if Robert saw him now, he would be so disappointed.

  
  


Luca was by the pool trailing his hand through the water to watch the ripples stir the reeds when the guard came to fetch him. Luca had grown so used to the guards being a silent, invisible presence that when this one spoke he almost toppled into the pool with surprise.

“You,” said the guard shortly. “Come.”

Luca wiped his hand on the stones and stood. The guard turned and set off at a brisk stride. Luca was obliged to trot after him. His first thought was that the King wanted Luca under the table to suck him off while he ate breakfast – that had happened before – but no, they turned down the leftmost hallway instead of the right. Luca hadn't been in this part of the Summer Palace. The ceilings were lower, the hall narrower. He supposed this must be near the servant's quarters. Why would the guard bring him here? Perhaps some high-ranking retainer or Palace official had bribed him for time with one of the King's whores. Luca knew it happened to some of the other boys, the ones the King had long ago grown bored of. Did this mean the King had grown bored of Luca?

The guard opened a door and pushed Luca inside. The room was pitch black. Was the man who paid for Luca going to fuck him in the dark? Maybe he wanted to hide his face, afraid Luca would complain to Aquila. The guard struck a match and a torch guttered and blazed, throwing long shadows on the walls of a storage closet.

There was a man standing in the corner. For a moment, Luca didn't recognize him. He was clean-shaven and dressed in noble's finery; the torchlight threw his hawkish features into stark relief. Then the man stepped out of the shadows. The light flickered over his red hair, his storm-colored eyes, revealing ink-stained hands and the nervous way he held himself. It was Robert.

“Ten minutes,” said the guard tersely. He backed out, closing the door behind him.

Robert was staring at Luca's chest. Belatedly, Luca remembered the rings. He'd almost become used to them, forgotten how he'd been marked, scarred,  _ruined_. He saw his own horror reflected in Robert's eyes.

Luca blurted, “Please, I'm sorry, I didn't want—” at the same time Robert said, “You must hate me.”

“I could  _never_ hate you,” Luca said, right as Robert replied, “You have  _nothing_ to be sorry for!”

They both stopped and looked at each other. A slow smile broke over Robert's face. Luca giggled. Then they were flying across the room. When their bodies met it was with a kind of rightness, a kind of wholeness. Luca was overcome by the need to touch every part of Robert at once: his hands, his cheek, the shaking line of his shoulders. He felt wetness on his face and couldn't tell if the tears were his or Robert's.

Abruptly, Luca pulled back. “Please, Robert,  _Asher_ —”

“Alive,” said Robert. “He's recovering at House d'Argent. I convinced Grandfather to pay his debt. He's free, Luca. As soon as the doctor approves, he'll go back to his family.”

After weeks of holding himself together, Luca had nothing left now to keep from falling apart. He buried his face in Robert's chest and sobbed. Robert held him, stroked his hair and made low soothing murmurs. Luca wept fear and guilt and helplessness into the solid warmth of Robert until he was purged of their poison. When he raised his head, Robert was looking at him with a softness that almost made him start to cry again.

“Second shirt of yours I've ruined,” Luca said with a small, sticky smile.

Robert laughed. “My shirts, my heart, my life. All yours, sweetheart.”

Luca took a shaky breath. “Robert, what are we going to do?”

“I have a plan,” said Robert. He laid a reassuring hand on Luca's back. “Have you heard of Philip of Guye?”

“The Exile?” Luca frowned. “Snatches here and there. He's the King's uncle, isn't he?”

“His father's younger brother,” Robert confirmed. “Philip was the Grand Commander of old King Edmund's army. Edmund left the throne to Philip on his deathbed, but Eustace pressed his right as firstborn son.”

“I remember the fighting,” said Luca. Swords clashing in the street, screams and broken glass. One of Luca's customers had been dragged off of him by soldiers and his throat slit on the brothel floor. The soldiers had fucked Luca after, still red and reeking with blood.

“The people loved Philip, but Court and the Council Lords backed Eustace,” Robert continued. “Or, well, it was vastly more complicated than that, but anyway, Philip left Lyonesse after Eustace signed a warrant for his execution. He's been in exile in Guye for over a decade now. The King makes a show of confidence, but he's stark terrified of Philip. He should be. Philip conquered half the Isles and subdued the barbarian territories for King Edmund; half the men in King Eustace's army are still loyal to him, never mind the ones who followed Philip to Guye. Even Eustace's bastard brother fled with him.”

“So you support Philip?” Luca said, trying to keep up.

Robert sighed and shrugged. “I think he'd make a better king than Eustace, but I support whoever gives us the best chance of being together. At the moment, that's Philip.”

Luca felt his stomach twist. “But they've already been fighting for so long, Robert, it could be  _years—_ ”

“Things are about to come to a head,” said Robert confidently. “I don't know exactly what Philip has planned, but Tolliver says he'll make his move soon.”

“And what's your part in all this?” Luca asked, dreading the answer.

Robert rubbed Luca's back, fingers just shy of brushing the brand. Luca winced. “I'll do whatever I have to,” Robert said. “Tolliver promised that when Philip is on the throne, he'll give you to me as a reward.”

Luca felt a heady rush of hope. “Truly?”

“Truly.” Robert smiled, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “We just have to play this game a little longer, Luca. Can you stand it?”

“Yes.” He could stand anything for Robert. “It isn't bad here. They feed us all the time. And I only have to serve one man. He's – well, he isn't gentle, not like you, but he doesn't hurt me on purpose. Really, Robert, I'm lucky. I am.”

Robert's smile faltered. There was something in his face that made Luca's chest feel too tight. When Robert touched his shoulder, Luca could feel a slight tremble in his hand.

“You said last time that I didn't have to get permission to ask a question,” Luca said. He hesitated, biting his lip. “I – can I still just ask?”

“Of course,” said Robert.

“Thank you.” Luca took a deep breath and said, “Please, if it's not too much trouble, do you think you could maybe teach Asher how to read?”

Robert smacked his forehead. “I should have thought of that! Of  _course_  I can teach Asher to read. Though I must admit, I doubt he'll prove as eager a pupil as you were.”

“Please don't give up on him,” said Luca. “Not even if he swears at you.”

“Not even if he throws a book at me,” Robert said. “And he probably will, you know.”

“Probably,” Luca admitted. Then, softly, he said, “Promise me you'll be careful.”

“I don't think Asher's  _that_  dangerous.”

Robert shook his head. “No, but the King is.”

“Ah.” Absently, Robert tucked a stray curl behind Luca's ear. “I promise I'll be careful. After all, I'm no use to you dead, am I?”

Before Luca could tell Robert that if he died it would be the end of the world, Robert leaned down and stole his voice with a slow, sweet kiss. Luca gasped into his mouth. Robert drew him closer until their bodies were flush, Luca's hips against his thighs, shoulders against his chest. Then he kissed him until Luca forgot where he ended and Robert began.

“Time's up.”

Robert pulled away, groaning. Luca blinked his vision clear. He felt as though someone had suddenly turned a harsh, unwelcome light on them. The guard stood in the doorway, rapping his fingers against the haft of his sword.

“Can't you give us ten more minutes?” Robert said irritably.

The guard shook his head. “They notice he's missing, we're all worse than dead.”

Robert made an aggrieved noise. He bent down until he was at eye-level with Luca and took his face in his hands. Luca arched into the touch, desperate for more.

“I'll come for you as soon as I can,” Robert said.

Luca nodded. Then, before he could stop himself, he whispered, “Don't forget me?”

Robert kissed him, brief and fierce. “As if I could.”

  
  


Following the guard back to the seraglio felt like a forced march back to some kind of opulent prison. Luca found he was dragging his feet until he had slowed to a shuffle. Each step took him away from Robert and closer to the King. He wanted to dig his heels in and refuse to go any further.

“You need to be carried?” the guard asked, scowling back over his shoulder.

“No, sir,” said Luca quickly. He hesitated, then said in a rush, “Please, sir, I want to help. Whatever your people have planned, just tell me what to do, anything, I'll do  _anything_ to be of use to my lord _._ ”

The guard cast him a long, unreadable expression. His mouth worked as though he were chewing something over. Luca pressed his lips together to keep himself from babbling on like an idiot.

“Dangerous,” said the guard after a moment.

“I know,” said Luca, thinking of the arena, of the King's ever-shifting temper. “That's why I need to do it. I have to protect my lord. Can your people promise me that? If I work for them, will they keep him safe?”

The guard sucked his cheek. “I'll ask the man I report to. Might be good to have eyes and ears in the King's bedroom.”

“I'll tell you everything,” Luca promised. “I know I'm not smart, not like Robert, but I'm good at listening.”

The guard raised a brow. “You call him Robert?”

Luca went red and dropped his eyes. The guard grunted. “Hm.” Then he shrugged. “Stupid to talk here. I'll pass the offer along.”

  
  


 

 


	32. Chapter 32

Estelle Fontaine had an ocean on her head. Waves of blue velvet and frothy cream netting crashed over barnacles, starfish, and anemones. A ship capsized in a tangle of ribbon. The jeweled eye of a giant squid glared at Robert from under an ostrich feather. Robert looked back with what he hoped was an expression of defiance. He would not be intimidated by a hat, damn it.

“Do you like my new hat, my lord?” asked Estelle.

“It's, er, striking,” said Robert. “Very...artistic.” 

Estelle accepted a cup of tea from the footman. The ship wobbled.

“The weather has been very fine,” said Grandfather loudly. He and Lord Fontaine were taking their tea on the other side of the parlor in order to give Robert and Estelle the illusion of privacy.

“The weather,” said Robert, taking his cue. “It's been really rather fine, don't you think?”

Estelle made a noncommittal noise and sipped her tea. Robert scrambled for a topic of conversation. Fencing? No, women didn't fence. Drinking? Did women drink? Maman had been partial to blackberry brandy, but Robert rather doubted that Estelle had ever imbibed anything stronger than medicinal tonic. Books, then? But no, women didn't read. Did they?

A crash from above made them both jump.

“What in the _world—_ ” Estelle began.

“Just the roof settling,” Robert said quickly. “Biscuit?”

There was another crash, this one distinctly like the sound of something expensive shattering against a wall. 

“I don't think that's the roof,” said Lord Fontaine.

Grandfather shot Robert a malevolent look from across the parlor. Robert choked on his tea. “Perhaps one of the servants dropped a rolling pin,” he said once he'd recovered.

_Thump. Thump. THUMP_.

“Oh, dear,” said Estelle, fanning herself.

“It's probably one of those damned subversives,” said Lord Fontaine darkly. “No doubt they want to make some silly point by assassinating a Council Lord.”

“It isn't an assassin, I assure you,” said Grandfather, fixing Robert with his gimlet glare. “My son has taken it upon himself to domesticate a new pet. I am afraid the attempt is not going well.”

“How generous of you,” said Estelle. “Is it a little puppy?”

“A mongrel,” said Grandfather dourly, “of the most vulgar Lower District extraction.”

Robert coughed. “I'm afraid he isn't quite housebroken yet.”

There was an outbreak of muffled shouting. Robert heard two more thumps and the sound of breaking glass. 

“Robert, if you would be so kind as to leash your cur,” Grandfather said through gritted teeth. “Then perhaps we could enjoy our tea like civilized people?”

Robert was already on his feet. He bowed to Estelle and Lord Fontaine, almost tripping backwards over a footstool in his haste. The moment the parlor door closed behind him Robert went sprinting up the stairs. He dashed through the hallways, nearly barreling over a maid, and skidded to a halt in front of the door to his suite.

Inside, the front room was in chaos. The curtains had been torn down, books ripped from their shelves, furniture overturned and pictures strewn everywhere. A vase that Robert knew for a fact was over three hundred years old lay in pieces on the floor. Feathers from disemboweled couch cushions floated in the air. At the center of it all stood Asher, on his crutches with his casted leg extended like a middle finger. Tolliver was leaning over Asher with an expression of utter serenity.

“—and then the thumbscrews,” Tolliver was saying, “which shall be particularly painful given that your fingernails will be removed prior to their application. Once your hands have been reduced to a gelatinous pulp I'll move on to the Cat's Paw, or Iberian Tickler as it is known in some circles; a fascinating device that, when properly utilized, will—”

Robert cleared his throat. Tolliver had the grace to look abashed.

“Why, Tolliver, I didn't know you had a hobby,” Robert said. 

“He was _threatening_ me,” said Asher, gloating.

“I'm sure you did everything in your power to deserve it,” Robert retorted. “Thank you, Tolliver, I'll take it from here.”

Tolliver bowed. “Should sir find any of my suggestions compelling, he need merely say the word.”

When the door shut behind Tolliver, Robert turned to Asher. “I hope you're pleased with yourself. I don't think I've ever heard Tolliver threaten someone with torture before.”

“I broke things,” Asher pointed out. “And I threw my homework in the fire. You _have_ to punish me now.”

Belatedly, Robert noticed the pages of Asher's phonics primer curling to ash in the fireplace. He would've liked to start breaking things himself. Instead he said in what he hoped were tones of calm composure, “And why do you want me to punish you?”

Asher dropped his gaze. “I _don't_ ,” he muttered, scuffing at the floor with his crutch.

Robert tried to think soothing thoughts until the urge to box Asher's ears had passed. “Then why in the name of all the gods do you persist in destroying my rooms? It only makes more work for the maids, you know.”

Asher shrugged. Robert closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Asher was still there. Pity. 

“I know this is a difficult time for you—”

“Oh, shove it,” Asher snapped. “We both know you can't keep up your whole sainted-noble act forever, m'lord. Might as well get it over with now.” He set his jaw. “So what's it going to be? Boq liked the cane, but you'll probably want to use a belt or a whip so you don't fuck up my legs worse, right?”

“I don't—”

“Or you could just use your fist,” Asher went on, voice bored. “Bet you could make it hurt, too. Maybe break a few more ribs.”

“I am _not_ going to do that,” Robert said, trying to stay calm.

Asher ignored him. “Back when I still tried to bite every prick they shoved in my mouth, Sark put a cloth on my face and poured water on it so it felt like I was drowning. It didn't leave any marks, if that's what you're worried about.” He pressed on ruthlessly, “The Pig had this, this _thing_ , this metal plug – they never used it on me, but they made me watch the Beast put it in Luca once. When he turned the screw it opened inside Luca like a claw. Tore him up so bad he couldn't walk for a week. You should've heard the noises he made when the Beast fucked him after. I bet if you did that to me I wouldn't mess up your nice rooms anymore.”

Robert was wracked with a wave of nausea so violent he doubled over. Luca bleeding under his torturer's hands, Asher _watching_ , and that would have made it so much worse, Luca trying not to cry, not to upset Asher, biting through his lip so the screams wouldn't escape—Robert's stomach roiled and he broke off, heaving. And where had Robert been? Drinking with Hugo and Francis? Getting his cock sucked by Adrian? Living his privileged, useless life as though Luca wasn't being hurt somewhere, wasn't waiting for him and dying a little more each day he didn't come…

“Don't,” Robert managed to choke out. “Don't – talk like that.”

“You going to puke?” Asher sounded interested.

“No.” Robert forced himself to straighten. “The servants have been traumatized enough today. Besides, I don't want to give you any ideas.”

He thought he glimpsed a brief grin pass over Asher's face. Then it was gone again, and Asher's chin was up in an expression of defiance even more convincing than the one Robert had given the octopus.

“I didn't know,” Robert said, choosing his words carefully. “How – how bad it was, there. For both of you.”

Asher shrugged as though he didn't care, but Robert saw the jump in his jaw, the tightening of his lips. “Worse for Luca than me,” said Asher. “Boq used to give him the worst patrons because he knew Luca could take it and not ever complain. Made him serve ten, twelve men a night. More, sometimes.” Asher scowled. “And Luca would always say he was _grateful_ , like Boq did him a favor by pimping him out and beating the crap out of him.”

Robert felt his heart twist in his chest. “Boq beat Luca?”

Asher's scowl deepened. “'Course he did. Had the overseer do it, anyway. Sark was ass over tit for Luca, but he'd still whip him hard as anything. Worse than the rest of us, even.” He added thoughtfully, “I think maybe he was punishing Luca for not loving him back.”

Robert stared. “ _What_?”

“Yeah,” said Asher, shrugging. “Everybody knew. Sark used to make Luca have sex with him in exchange for books.”

Robert scrubbed a hand over his face. “I didn't know.” As if not knowing made it all right. As if that redeemed him somehow.

Suddenly Asher's expression clouded over. He swung his crutch, cracking a wall sconce. “It isn't _fair!_ ” he shouted. “Luca was _always_ good. He didn't talk back or make his patrons mad. He protected me, even if it meant taking a punishment that should've been mine. And he gave me his food, and he fucked Sark for meds when I was hurt, and he never, ever asked for anything in return.” He swung again, and this time the sconce shattered. “He was my best friend and I didn't even _tell_ him!”

There was a long quiet, Asher staring at the broken glass like it was a puzzle he couldn't figure out and Robert trying to think of something, anything to say. 

“He knows,” Robert said finally. “He knows, Asher.”

Asher shook his head. “He knows _fuck all_ ,” he said, voice hoarse. “He's all screwed up. He thought everything was his fault, even when was mine. All the sick shit those bastards did to him, he thought he deserved it. He didn't like to talk about before the Harlequin. He'd get real quiet and start pulling his hair and his eyes would go empty, like he wasn't _there_ anymore. But he'd have screaming nightmares. Woke the whole house up. Boq had him whipped for that, too.” He narrowed his eyes at Robert. “Are _you_ going to whip him?”

Robert jerked back. “No! Gods no.”

“He wet the bed sometimes,” Asher went on. “And he'd rock back and forth like a crazy person. Would you punish him for that? Boq did.”

“There's nothing in this world that would make me hurt Luca,” Robert said firmly. Or at least not any more than his own godsdamned unforgivable ignorance already had.

“Good,” Asher said. “Because he's already hurt really bad. I think if he gets anymore hurt he'll just – just go away and not ever come back.”

“I won't let that happen,” Robert said, and he hoped that Asher heard it as the sacred, unbreakable promise it was. “I'm doing everything I can to keep him safe.”

Asher narrowed his eyes. “Oh yeah? Like what?”

Robert smothered a noise of irritation. “I've made a deal with – with some powerful people. I can't tell you any more than that.”

“Is Luca all right at least?” For the first time, Robert heard the desperation in Asher's voice.

“I—” No, he couldn't lie, not with Asher looking at him like that. “I don't know. When I saw him, he was…” Too thin, too pale. His voice was so soft it was barely audible, his eyes shadowed by sleeplessness, and the King had _pierced him_ like a fucking animal. “He was enduring.”

“He's good at that,” Asher said bitterly.

Robert didn't want to think about everything Asher had seen Luca endure. Everything Asher had endured himself. “When I see him again, he'll want to know that you've made progress on your reading,” Robert said, because he was not, it seemed, above a little emotional blackmail.

Asher's head came up. “Can't you just tell him I'm on novels already?” he said, wheedling.

Robert sighed. “That would be a lie, Asher.”

Asher rolled his eyes. “But it's _useless_ , reading,” he explained in tones of infinite patience. “That's why nobles do it all the time. Well, okay, Luca liked to read, but he's just _weird_.”

Robert grinned. “Did Luca ever tell you that I was the one who taught him how to read?”

Asher looked astonished. “ _You_?”

Robert laughed. This time when Asher smiled, it lingered for a few seconds before being replaced by his customary scowl. “You really do love him, don't you?” Asher said slowly. “Like free people love each other. Not like a noble with a slave.”

Robert spread his hands palm-up. “Everything I have to give is his.” His mouth twisted. “For what little that's worth, anyway.”

Asher jutted his jaw. “You going to fuck him?”

“Not unless he wants me to,” said Robert, struggling to keep his expression neutral. 

Asher snorted. “He doesn't know how to want it.”

Robert tried not to show how those words caught him like the flat of a sword to the ribs, knocking the wind out of him. Luca's sweet cock soft between his thighs, the flat note in his voice as he explained why—Gods, what if Asher was right? What if Luca was too broken to ever really want it, even from Robert?

“We'll work on that,” Robert said, as much to himself as to Asher. “We'll figure it out. Both of us, together.” Then, with a certainty he didn't quite feel: “I would never do anything to Luca that he doesn't want.”

Asher shrugged. “You wouldn't be the first.” Before Robert could reply, Asher said, as casually as if he was asking what was for dinner, “You going to fuck me?”

“For the last time, _no!_ ” Robert ran a distracted hand through his hair. Damn, but he was getting sick of answering that question.

“You can, you know,” Asher said with another shrug. “The servants told me how you had to fight with your old man to keep me. Bet you didn't go through all that trouble for nothing.”

“First of all, I'm not going to keep you,” Robert said. “The second your leg is healed you'll be sent straight home.” Oh, happy day. “Second of all, that is the single least convincing attempt at seduction I've ever seen. How old are you, twelve?”

“Sixteen!”

Robert snorted. “Bullshit.”

“Okay, thirteen,” Asher admitted. “But I'm almost fourteen, I think.”

The same age Robert had been when he started sneaking into Luca's pallet at night. Gods, had he really been that young? But that was _different_ , damn it. Robert had never been hurt like Asher. Like Luca. Even if Luca was scarred more deeply than Robert could've imagined, Robert had still only been a naive young boy who couldn't dream of anything better than rutting into Luca's hand as they kissed. Asher shouldn't even _know_ about the intimate acts he was offering. The injustice of what had been done to him struck Robert like a blow.

“I don't have sex with children,” Robert said firmly.

“It never bothered any of the others,” Asher shot back.

“They were rapists,” Robert said, with such venom it startled him.

“Luca says—”

Robert winced. “I know what Luca says. Luca is – confused.”

“Maybe that's why I couldn't behave like they wanted me to,” Asher said, almost to himself. “It never stopped feeling like rape.”

“It _was_ rape, Asher.” Robert tried to keep his tone even, but he could hear his anger. “What those men did to you should be a crime. I'd like to castrate every single one of them personally.”

To his astonishment, Asher laughed. “You don't act much like a lord, you know,” he said.

Robert grinned. “I shall take that as a compliment.”

The corner of Asher's mouth kept twitching, as though it wanted to quirk up in a smile. “You're okay,” he said. “Still not good enough for Luca, though.”

“I'm trying,” Robert said, and he meant it with all his might.

“Are you going to take him away from the King soon?” Asher asked. The hope in his voice was so naked Robert ached.

“I don't know, Asher,” Robert said carefully. “You have to understand, it's too dangerous for me to even see him again right now. The King keeps him – close.” Close enough to grope, to paw, to pet like a dog until Robert was shaking with the tension of keeping his fists clenched at his sides and Grandfather had him excused. “And I'm not exactly being ignored myself, you know. Grandfather – well. It's just dangerous.”

Asher's eyes were hard and cold as flint. “Coward,” he muttered.

Rage flared hot in Robert's chest. “You have no idea how high the stakes are! Luca's life isn't the only one I'm responsible for at the moment, all right? I put one foot wrong and people who are very important to me will die. Horribly. And Luca – gods, do you think I'd be able to survive losing him again? It's been made excruciatingly clear to me that the price of my disobedience is Luca's life. I'm already putting him in enough danger by the damned little I'm able to do without Grandfather – without beingnoticed.” He took a shaky breath. “And some days I still just want to pick him up and _run_.”

Asher shook his head. “He'd never run. He told me.”

“There's no chance we'd make it, anyway.” Robert realized that he was dangerously close to tears. He ran a hand over his forehead. “Luca is always so near, you know. The King likes to display him when the lords are assembled. There are times I could reach out and touch…” Asher was looking at him with something like pity. “And it's been _weeks_ ,” Robert went on, words pouring out of him like water through a broken dam. “Six weeks since I spoke to him. Six weeks, three days. I can't even lookat him at Court. Naked. _Crawling_. Gods, I hope that when Philip kills the King he makes it slow—” He broke off abruptly. Asher's eyes were wide. “Never mind. I just – I _promised_ Luca. I promised I would come for him, and it's been _six weeks,_ and what if—” He took a shuddering breath. “What if he's given up on me?”

Asher thought for a moment, then gave a decisive shake of the head. “Nah. If he didn't give up on me, he won't give up on you. I gave him more reason. But he never did.” Asher hesitated, then said in a rush, “I say things I don't mean sometimes. Luca knew that.”

“I'm sure he did,” said Robert, surprised. “And so do I.”

“Good.” Asher nodded, shifting his weight from crutch to crutch. “If you say you'll get Luca out, I believe you.”

Robert swallowed around the sudden constriction in his throat. He didn't know why Asher's trust meant so much to him, but it did. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

They both startled at a rap on the door. “If sir has not had his brains knocked in by the devil-child, Lord d'Argent is waxing rather impatient for his return,” Tolliver said through the keyhole. “As is Lady Fontaine, I might add.”

Robert groaned. “Are you sure you don't want to knock my brains in?” he asked Asher plaintively. 

Asher pretended to consider it. “Nah.”

  
  


 


	33. Chapter 33

 

The thief knew that he was going to die. Robert could see it in his face, his clenched teeth and wild eyes. Still, the thief kept his knife steady as he circled the gladiator. Robert doubted he would have been half so composed had it been him in the arena. The gladiator had a full head on the tallest man at Court, and his shoulders were thick and broad as an ox's shanks. Though the gladiator was unarmed, Robert knew that he could tear a man to meat with his bare hands. Robert watched it happen so many times that the horror had faded to a faint sort of nausea.

The gladiator was a professional. He dismantled the thief with cold efficiency, drawing out the kill for as long as the King was bouncing on his throne shouting suggestions. Finally, when the thief was nothing more than a blubbering heap of blood and shattered bones, the King waved his hand. The gladiator snapped the thief's neck in one practiced gesture. Afterward he laid the body down on the sand almost gently. Robert saw the gladiator's lips move and wondered if he was praying.

The assembled lords applauded. King Eustace bounced up and down on his throne. “Oh, splendid! Splendid!” he cried. “What a brute! It's true what the priests say: these barbarians are an unholy miscegenation of animal and demon. Except for my Golden Bird, of course,” he said fondly, looking down at the boy who knelt at his feet.

Over months (two months, three weeks, four days) of forced attendance at Court, Robert had learned that it was easier if he could pretend that the boy kept leashed to the King's throne along with the lion and the monkey was simply another faceless, voiceless slave. He was nothing more than a flash of gold at the corner of Robert's eye, a silent presence when he knelt before the King, a head bowed under the King's heavy hand. The boy certainly was not Luca, with his sweetness and compassion and perfect, unearned trust. To think otherwise would mean Robert would have to confront the specter of his own monumental inadequacy, and down that road lay madness.

Tolliver promised Robert that it wouldn't be long now. Philip was massing his forces; King Eustace's army had already moved on the border of Guye and been driven back. The final hour was almost at hand, Tolliver said. Robert just had to be patient. 

Of course, patience came a lot easier when Robert wasn't being forced to watch the King stroke Luca like a pet.

“Come closer, gladiator.” The King crooked his finger.

The gladiator hesitated only a moment before swaggering forward. He fell to his knees with a thump at the perimeter of the arena and made a clumsy gesture of obeisance.

“Tell the Court why you were sent to my arena,” the King ordered.

A muscle twitched in the gladiator's jaw. His eyes flicked to Luca.

“My Golden Bird shall translate,” said the King. He yanked Luca to his feet and shoved him forward. Luca stumbled, catching himself right at the arena's edge. He was far, far too close to the gladiator. The man could reach out with those lethal hands and _touch_ him. Robert's fingers tightened into fists. He focused on breathing slowly, evenly, and tried to keep himself from leaping into the arena.

Luca said something to the gladiator in the barbarian tongue, voice so soft it was scarcely a whisper. The gladiator replied in their language. He looked from Luca to the King and back again, eyes narrow with distrust. 

“Well?” said the King impatiently.

“I kill overseer,” said the gladiator. His accent was so thick and guttural that Robert almost couldn't understand him.

“Oh my!” the King chuckled. “A born murderer. How delightful! Did you have a wife, gladiator?”

Luca translated rapidly. The gladiator's nostrils flared. He made a curt movement with his hand. Luca started to speak, but the gladiator interrupted him. 

“Dead,” he said roughly.

The King clapped his hand over his heart. “A lover _and_ a fighter!” The lords tittered, and the King's smile widened. “How lonely you must be,” he sighed. “I suppose the only pleasure you've experienced since coming to my arena is that of the kill. What dreadful hospitality we have shown you!” The King's expression shifted, sharpened. He gestured at Luca. “Kiss him,” he ordered.

Robert started forward. He had no idea what he was going to do, only that it would somehow involve strangling the King with his bare hands. He was jerked back by Grandfather's grip on his ear. It took all Robert's will to keep from striking him. Instead he twisted, trying to wrest himself away. Grandfather grabbed his arm and held on bruising-hard. He was shockingly strong for a man of his years, and he had a good twenty pounds on Robert. They fought in silence, Grandfather twisting Robert's arm behind his back while Robert tried to stomp on his foot. The scuffle attracted a few curious glances from the other lords. 

Grandfather dragged Robert backwards through into a curtained antechamber. Once inside he let Robert struggle for a few moments more, then released him. Robert went sprawling back on the carpet. Before he could push himself up, Grandfather pinned him to the floor with the tip of his cane.

“That will be quite enough of that,” he said calmly.

“You can't ask me to watch this!” Robert hissed.

“Oh yes I can,” Grandfather retorted. “If you leave now, you'll insult His Majesty.”

Robert did not say _Bollocks to His Majesty_ , though he dearly wanted to. “If you make me stay, I will vomit.”

Grandfather flared his nostrils. The cane dug into Robert's chest. “Stay and I'll double your allowance.”

“You have me under virtual house arrest. There's nothing to spend my allowance _on._ ”

“A new épée, then.” Grandfather's tone was wheedling.

Robert tried to knock the cane away. Grandfather moved as fast as a swordsman. Within a second he had his cane against Robert's throat and his foot on Robert's chest, holding him down like a dockside tough. Robert choked and went still.

“Leave and I'll have that debt-whore of yours sent right back to the gutter where I found him,” Grandfather said. “Do you think he'll survive the night in the Lower District? He can't even run.”

No doubt anticipating Robert's fervent desire to kick him, Grandfather bore down harder on his cane. “You – you are a miserable old tyrant,” Robert wheezed.

“I know it pleases you to think so, my son,” said Grandfather with a long-suffering sigh. “Now, are you going to behave yourself or will you force me to take stronger measures?”

Robert thought of Asher alone in the Lower District, men circling him like vultures. They would demand money, and when they found Asher had none they would kill him and dump his body in the bay. Robert had seen it happen before. He'd watched from Maman's window as her pimp's bully-boys beat a customer to death for the crime of an empty purse, then rolled him over the edge of the dock when they were done. Robert couldn't let that happen to Asher.

“I'll behave,” Robert said, hating the way his voice broke.

“Good boy.” Grandfather removed his cane. “Let us return to His Majesty's entertainment.”

  
  


***

  
  


“Kiss him.”

The command echoed through the arena like a clap of thunder. Luca went rigid. He heard the gladiator's sharp intake of breath. So the man _did_ know more of the wolves' language than he was letting on. His big hands clenched spasmodically, face stormed over with loathing. Luca remembered those hands wrapped around the dead man's neck, the sharp _crack_ of vertebrae under the gladiator's fingers. The body had been dragged away, but Luca could feel the dead man's presence lingering in the arena like a thick, foul smoke.

“Get on with it!” shouted the King, banging his goblet against the arm of his throne. “Go on, kiss!”

Luca was too well-trained not to do as he was told. He was borne forward on legs that threatened to give out any moment. When Luca entered the arena, the gladiator made a noise of disgust and turned away. Luca wanted to run. Instead he reached out a tentative, trembling hand. The gladiator recoiled with a growl. Luca froze.

“A beast indeed!” the King chortled as the Court tittered in amusement. “Will my little beauty gentle him?”

The gladiator growled again, low in his throat. His jaw was jumping, teeth bared, pupils blown. He _did_ look like a beast. Luca shivered, clammy with panic. He would be torn apart by the gladiator, and the King would laugh and laugh…

“Please.” The word spilled out before Luca could stop himself. Immediately he wished that he could swallow it back. He could hear his accent, the taint of Lyonesse on his tongue _. Traitor. Whore._

The gladiator looked at Luca out of the corner of his eye. He was breathing raggedly. Luca saw for the first time that his stomach was scored with deep red runnels where his opponent, disarmed, had tried to claw him open. 

“They'll punish us if we don't,” Luca whispered. He glanced at the thick web of scars that crisscrossed the gladiator's back and legs. Had he learned yet that there were punishments that broke the will, not just the skin?

When Luca reached out the gladiator didn't pull away. His face was rough under Luca's fingertips, sweaty and coarse with stubble. Luca licked his lips and smiled for the audience. Then he leaned forward, slowly, carefully, and made a show of nuzzling the gladiator's neck. He smelled like blood and fear. Death clung to him like a shroud.

“What's your name?” Luca murmured.

The gladiator said nothing for a moment. Then something in him seemed to relax. “Ged, son of Gedrik,” he said quietly. In their language, his voice was deep and rich. “You?”

Luca laid his hand on Ged's chest. He could feel the rhythm of his heart, fast as a drumbeat. Ged didn't push him away.

“Luca.”

Ged scowled. “Your _real_ name,” he said. “Not what these fucking wolves call you.”

Luca took a shuddering breath. “Lukjan,” he said, and _oh_ , if he didn't ache to hear it said aloud for the first time in so, so long. “Lukjan, son of Jan.”

“What was your tribe, Lukjan?”

Luca moved his hand over Ged's chest, brushing a flat brown nipple. He felt a shiver run through the man's skin. “Skua.”

“Stag.”

Luca touched the scars on Ged's bicep, a crude outline of an antlered buck. Alek would have his own mark by now, a flying bird cut into his flesh with a hot knife by their uncles. It would be the only scar of so many that meant his body belonged to him.

“I can't do this,” said Ged wretchedly. “Two men – it's unclean.”

“Kiss!” the King roared. Luca heard the _clang_ as his goblet was thrown to the ground. “Or else I'll send a pack of dogs into the arena and let them fuck whoever doesn't die first.”

The threat was enough to make Luca bold. He dragged Ged's face to his and pressed their lips together. 

Ged's mouth was dry and hot. Luca dug his fingers into Ged's hair and pulled him closer, trying to force him to respond with any passion at all, even anger. The lords would love to see the King's pet whore ravished by a savage gladiator. But Ged only went limp and a miserable sound somewhere between a yelp and a groan. When Luca licked his lips, Ged kept them stubbornly closed.

“Boring,” the King declared, kicking his heels. “Strip the gladiator. Make him hard.”

Ged's growl rumbled through Luca's mouth so loud it hurt his teeth. He jerked away, shaking Luca's hands from him.

“Oh, dear,” the King sighed. “Must I summon the dogs?”

Luca fell to his knees beside Ged. He threw his arms around Ged's neck and pressed his lips against his cheek, as though spilling dirty words into his ear.

“The Lady will understand,” Luca whispered urgently. “She knows I'm the abomination, not you.”

Ged said nothing, but Luca could feel a little of the tension leave him. Luca stood, pulling Ged up after. Standing full height, Luca barely reached Ged's chest. At least that gave Luca a place to start. He ran his hands up Ged's ribs, feather-light, mindful of the bruises. Ged twitched as if flea-bitten, but he didn't pull away. Encouraged, Luca wet his lips and moved his mouth across the ridge of Ged's pectoral. That did get a reaction. Ged's nipples tightened into dark peaks; his breath caught. When Luca ghosted his fingertips over Ged's thigh he exhaled in a stuttering gasp. 

Luca chanced a quick glance up through his lashes and saw that Ged's face was strained, eyes squeezed shut. He was probably pretending Luca was a woman. Relieved that Ged was cooperating at all, Luca aided the illusion by shaking out his hair and letting the tips brush Ged's groin. His cock jumped with interest under the loincloth.

“Strip him,” the King commanded.

Ged's eyes flew open. Before he could protest, Luca pulled the loincloth away. Ged wasn't hard yet, but his cock was thickening. Gods, the _smell_ of him. A concentrated scent of unwashed crotch mingled with darker odors, the tang of dried blood and the sweat of dead men. Luca's stomach roiled. He forced himself to smile. When Luca took Ged's cock in his hand, Ged shut his eyes again.

“Goddess,” he panted as Luca stroked him. “Goddess, forgive me…”

When the King ordered, “Suck him!” Luca was already halfway to his knees. He rested his chin on the matted thatch of Ged's pubic hair and looked up at him.

“Be rough with me,” he said softly. “That's what he wants.”

Ged made a noise like a bitten-off snarl. Still, when Luca closed his mouth over the head of his cock he thrust his hips forward reflexively. Luca let the rank length slide down his throat, making a helpless choking sound for the audience. Ged froze, concerned. Luca widened his eyes and shoved his head down, swallowing Ged to the root. _Like this. See?_

Ged understood. He tried, but his movements were awkward, his thrusts clumsy and careful. Luca never had trouble getting patrons to hurt him before. They always enjoyed it. Luca knew that there was something wrong with him, something bad and twisted that made men want to see him writhe with pain. Whatever it was, Ged seemed to be immune. He used Luca's mouth gently, as though he was afraid of breaking him. Luca held back a sob of frustration. 

“I believe I may fall asleep,” the King sighed. 

Luca forced his mouth down, grinding his nose into Ged's crotch until his lungs screamed for air. He moved Ged's hands to the sides of his head and drew back just enough to let the audience see pearly strings of precum drool down his chin. Then he slammed back down. Ged gasped. Luca held Ged's wrists, keeping his hands in position. Hopefully it looked like Ged was fucking Luca's face and not the other way around.

“Oh, _much_ better.” The King's voice dropped to a low purr. “What do you think, my lords? Are we enjoying the entertainment?”

There was a ripple of approval. Luca could hear lords shifting in their seats, no doubt discreetly adjusting their erections. He wondered if Robert was there, watching Luca perform at his master's command like a dog. 

Robert came to Court often now, polished and perfectly appointed as he sailed along in his grandfather's wake. He never looked at Luca. Luca knew that it was stupid to pray that Robert would glance in his direction, pathetic to hope that he would walk close enough so that Luca could touch the floor where his foot had been, but he couldn't help it. He missed Robert so badly that longing throbbed in his chest like a second heartbeat. Luca thought of the King laughing as he pushed back on the cock inside him: _Desperate whore_. The King had no idea how true those words were.

There had been no more secret meetings in the storage closet. When Luca had asked the guard said it was too dangerous, that they were both watched too closely, that the threat of discovery was too great. Luca tried to convince himself that it didn't matter. Robert had seen Luca grovel at the King's feet for months now (two months, three weeks, four days). He must hate Luca even more than Luca hated himself.

_Don't think about Robert._ Luca turned his head, purposefully sending Ged's cock into his gullet at a bad angle so that it scraped and burned. _Don't think about him seeing you like this. Don't think about what a filthy slut you are._ He tightened his throat, blinked back tears. _Don't think. Just don't_ think _…_

Then Master Trainer's voice was in his head, sharp and mocking. _That shouldn't be too difficult for you, should it, hole?_

The King's singsong sneer cut through Luca's reverie. “Shall we have the gladiator mount his prize?”

“Hear, hear!” called one of the lords to laughter from his fellows. _Not Robert_ , Luca told himself. He almost believed it.

Luca turned over on his hands and knees, spread his legs and thrust his ass up. The pose was familiar, habitual. He was still wet and open from the toys the King had used on him earlier. Ged wasn't overlarge; it wouldn't be difficult to take him. Nothing Luca hadn't done a thousand times before. 

Ged thumped to his knees behind Luca. As he lined up his cock and pushed in, Luca could hear Ged mumbling prayers under his breath, begging the Lady for mercy. Luca envied him for thinking she would still listen.

  
  


***

  
  


Robert did vomit after. He waited until they were in the carriage before throwing the window open and retching up wine and foie gras until his stomach was empty.

“Your whore must be a clever little animal indeed, to have wrought such an effect on you,” said Grandfather disgustedly.

Robert wanted to hit Grandfather so badly that his hand rose from the sill. He forced it back down with effort. “Don't you _dare_ call him an animal,” he said through gritted teeth.

“That's what they are, Robert. Barbarians. Slaves.” Grandfather sniffed in disapproval. “What else but an animal would rut in public after a kill?”

Robert lifted his head and looked at Grandfather levelly. “What else but an animal would order it?”

Grandfather huffed and rapped his cane, but he couldn't meet Robert's eyes. “The King will tire of your whore soon enough,” he said. “Then we can put this foolishness behind us.”

Robert thought of the broken music box, thrown away once the King was bored of it—and caught by Robert, who had been waiting by the King's side at just the right moment. A fragile hope was born to life within him. Damn Tolliver's revolution; Luca could be Robert's yet. He only had to win the favor of the King. How difficult could it be?

  
  


 


	34. Chapter 34

The ballroom had been transformed into a forest. Silk-leaved trees stretched silver branches to the ceiling, each bough glittering with jeweled fruit. The lords and ladies of Court had outfitted themselves like fairytale peasants in satin motley and straw hats with brims spilling over with exotic flowers. They carried bouquets of dried wheat and shepherd's crooks carved of ivory; more than one woman carried a lapdog wearing a lambskin. Servitors flitted amongst the guests, clad in nothing but furs. The floor was carpeted with rose petals, which dancers had been slipping on all evening. Earlier Lady Marshfield had taken an acrobatic tumble into a servitor who spilled champagne all down her dress. She was forced to retire sopping and disgraced. Only Robert had seen the look of doomed horror on the servitor's face as the guard dragged him away.

The King's Arcadia was the sort of spectacle that Robert used to avoid at all costs. Now he was even dressed for the occasion in a floppy peasant's cap and tunic. Of course, no real peasant would have been caught dead mucking out the cow pasture in a velvet smock and shoes that laced to the knee with silk ribbons, but Tolliver had insisted that homespuns were not appropriate attire for the Summer Palace. If the other boot-boys could see Robert now they would probably throw dung at him. Robert thought they would be entirely justified.

Robert turned to get the wine-bearer's attention and instead caught sight of Estelle's friend Belinda glaring at him like he'd killed her family. Robert sighed inwardly. From the moment he'd been introduced to Belinda she had hated him with a zeal that Robert found frankly terrifying. He had no idea what he'd done to earn her antipathy. Quite possibly she was insane. Robert gave Belinda a tepid smile and clutched his wineglass like a life preserver.

A laugh from behind him made Robert stiffen. Adrian, of course, no doubt entertaining his admirers with a scintillating commentary on Robert's flaws. Adrian had yet to speak to Robert, but he'd been sniping in his direction ever since Robert began attending Court. Perhaps he had given up on charm and was instead hoping to insult Robert into coming back to him. Belinda could probably give Adrian a few pointers; Robert suspected that her evaluation of his character was rather less than charitable.

Estelle's gloved fingers pinched Robert's arm. “Are you well, my lord?”

Robert dragged his mind away from Adrian. “Sorry?”

“Lord Pringle made a diverting remark and you neglected to laugh,” she said, a note of reproach in her voice.

“Oh. Er—”

“The crowd is oppressive,” said Estelle. “Shall we retire to the veranda?”

Robert thought of the cigarette case tucked discreetly in his breast pocket. “That would be just the thing.”

Belinda watched them depart with cold fury in her eyes.

It was a wet, chilly night, and the veranda was all but deserted. The lanterns spat and guttered; light from the high windows was reflected in puddles like pools of colored wax. Estelle held up her skirts so not to drag them in the wet, showing a flash of bony ankle with every step. Robert thought, not for the first time, that it was a shame he wasn't at all inclined towards women. Estelle may not have been beautiful, but she wasn't deformed, and she dressed impeccably. Happy marriages had been built on less.

“You're distracted tonight, my lord,” said Estelle. She let her skirts fall in a ripple of spangled tulle.

“Indigestion.” Robert fished out the cigarette case. “Do you mind?”

To his everlasting shock, Estelle withdrew her own case from the crevice of her bosom. “Only if you don't.”

“I would be something of a hypocrite if I did,” Robert pointed out, trying to keep the surprise from his voice. He struck a match and lit his cigarette, then Estelle's. She took a businesslike pull and exhaled from the side of her mouth.

“Evidence of your long absence from Court,” said Estelle. “Prevailing opinion holds that women smoking is déclassé.”

“Rubbish,” said Robert. “In fact, my mother smoked.”

“Wasn't she Tyrminian royalty?”

“I – yes.” Robert took a drag to hide his consternation. “She picked up the habit in exile.”

“One of my cousins was beheaded during the Terror,” said Estelle, flicking away a cone of ash. “It was a dreadful time. Your mother was fortunate to escape.”

For a fleeting moment, Robert wondered what Maman's life would have been if she really had escaped—found success as an actress, or failing that, a lover who didn't hit her or make money from her body. Could she have been happy? He remembered her face when the opium took her, blank with bliss. It was a kind of happiness, Robert supposed. She'd had that, at least, even at the end.

“How did your parents meet?” asked Estelle. Robert looked at her suspiciously, but her expression held nothing but honest curiosity.

“While my father was abroad,” Robert replied, the lie Grandfather had drilled into him coming easily. “My mother was living with sympathizers in Iberia. My parents married secretly; my mother bore me. She was taken by the pox while I was still an infant. My father came back to Lyonesse and never spoke of her again.” He exhaled in a huff of smoke. “Or me, for that matter.”

“How romantic,” Estelle sighed. “Tragic, of course, but all the great romances are.” She took a drag on her cigarette. “Though I suppose it's easier to wax romantic about tragedy when one's own romances are not doomed to a tragic end.”

Robert arched a brow. “Are you speaking abstractly or specifically?”

“I think you know,” said Estelle quietly

Robert thought for a moment. Then, choosing his words carefully, he said, “Belinda doesn't like me very much.”

Estelle's jaw tightened. “She's jealous. Stupid of her; she's known for years that I'd have to marry. If she wasn't so quixotic she would have secured a betrothed of her own. It does no good to wait.”

“To hope,” said Robert without thinking.

Estelle exhaled slowly. “Yes. In vain. Those of our preferences are best served by pragmatism. If we can't be with the one we desire—”

“We may as well be with each other,” Robert finished. “And after we marry?”

“I won't leave Belinda.” Estelle spoke with absolute conviction. “You can have as many boys as you want. Keep a catamite. A dozen. We must produce a son – best to get that over with as quickly as possible – but after our line is secure, I expect to spend most of the year in the provinces.”

“With Belinda, I suppose.”

“You can hardly object,” Estelle sniffed.“Belinda and I are prepared to be discreet. Should you take up with a freeman, I expect you to conduct yourself likewise.”

Robert vented his spleen by kicking at a potted palm. “And why is it that we could keep a hundred pleasure-slaves of our own sex and no one would bat an eyelash, but the moment we take a freeborn lover all Court throws its hands up and cries outrage?”

“We are expected to propagate our House,” said Estelle with a shrug. “You can hardly bear a son with another man, my lord. Nor can I with Belinda. We have a duty—”

“Oh, gods, yes, our  _duty_.” Robert kicked again at the palm. “So my grandfather has informed me. At length.” He straightened and affected a somber, ponderous tone. “It is the natural course of a man's life that he should spend his youth enjoying the company of other youths and the pleasure of boys. Indeed, he ought to favor bedfellows of his own sex and scorn women, for to produce a bastard is an undying disgrace. Then the day will come when it is time to put aside childish things and cleave to a wife as the gods have commanded. Some hold it to be acceptable that, upon producing an heir, a man in the fullness of maturity may revisit the dissolution of his younger days, but we must disdain such license as self-serving bunk. A man's energies are best expended in the service of the State.”

To his surprise, Estelle laughed. “You have his voice down to the note.”

Robert cracked a grin despite himself. “Well, it's certainly assaulted my ears often enough.” He sighed. “Why me, Estelle? You didn't choose me merely because I have no taste for women. There are a dozen eligible bachelors at Court who share my aversion and aren't nearly as obnoxious.”

Estelle blew a plume of smoke into the air, silvery in the lamplight. “The King's grandmother was Camilla d'Argent,” she said, as though that were explanation enough.

Robert wrinkled his nose. “So?”

“Camilla d'Argent was your grandfather's cousin,” said Estelle. “Their fathers were brothers.”

Robert made a gesture of impatience. “Your point?”

“Should His Majesty produce no heirs, and should the war against the Exile end in his execution and that of his daughter, you, Robert d'Argent, could very well be next in line for the throne.”

Robert's mouth went dry. He realized his cigarette had gone out and was hanging from his lip, a cold column of ash. He spat it out and fumbled to light another one. It took him several tries to strike the match; his hands were shaking. “There are cousins,” he said. “The Duchess of Montmarte—”

“She's past ninety.”

“Well, all right, but she has a nephew—”

“Lord Graeme? The man has to be kept in seclusion at his mother's estate because he's allergic to everything. Last year he ate a mustard seed and nearly died. How long do you imagine he'd survive Court at Lyonesse?”

The dark double meaning of Estelle's words did not escape Robert. He swallowed. “Grand Commander Courbet, then. He's got as much of a claim as I do.”

“Not by blood,” said Estelle. “And blood is what matters to Court and Council both. The King proved that when he won their support against the Exile.”

“There must be distant relations,” Robert said desperately. “Foreign royalty.”  _Someone_   _else_.  _Anyone_   _else._

Estelle snorted. “A foreigner on the throne? The nobles would be up in arms. Literally. No, the heir must be of Lyonesse.”

“I'm half-Tyrminian,” Robert pointed out, the lie mingling with smoke on his tongue. “Besides, the King is still young. What makes you so certain he won't produce an heir of his own?”

Estelle gave him a long, speaking look. Robert thought of the King bouncing on his throne and giggling at bloodshed; his quicksilver moods, the mad glitter in his eye. He had been offered the most beautiful noble ladies from the Isles to the Bronze Coast, but he waved them away like bitter wine. The King preferred to keep his presence free of women, well-born or otherwise. Instead he surrounded himself with high lords like Robert and beautiful slaveboys like Luca. If anyone had ever dared to lecture the King on his duty, he clearly hadn't listened.

“Has no one ever told you how close to the throne you are?” asked Estelle. She sounded almost pitying.

“Not so directly,” Robert admitted. “Grandfather had me memorize the royal lineage, of course, but I didn't pay much attention.” He took a drag on his cigarette and held the smoke until his lungs burned, then expelled it in a sigh. “Estelle, you must understand, I'm a bad hand to gamble your fortunes on.”

“So my father has tried to convinced me.” Estelle flicked her cigarette to the ground and killed it under a bejeweled heel. “But I like the stakes.”

Robert couldn't think of a retort. He took one long last drag on his cigarette, then ground it out on the balustrade. A flicker from below caught his eye. He leaned over to see the lawn twinkling with lanterns, each held aloft by a slave. More slaves were arranged on stages along the paths, living ornaments, each painted like marble and posed like the statues in the Royal Gallery. The master of ceremonies had clearly planned for better weather; the lawn was abandoned, guests declining its entertainments in favor of the warm, dry ballroom. Robert felt the damp, chill wind on his skin and shivered. The slaves must be cramped and freezing by now. How many hours would they have to stand forgotten, ignored, and so perfectly, eerily still?

Without thinking, Robert asked Estelle, “Do you see them?”

Estelle glanced at the lawn, then looked back at Robert blankly. “See what?”  
  


 


	35. Chapter 35

The next few hours passed in a blur of dancing, drinking, and insipid conversation. Robert went through the motions, mind elsewhere. When a footman appeared at his side he jumped like a cat.

“My lord has been invited to join a private party in His Majesty's card parlor,” said the footman with all the pomp of a trumpet fanfare.

Estelle made a noise of approval. The other guests in their circle looked impressed. Belinda's expression, if possible, grew even sourer. Robert found that he didn't have to feign pleasure. Only the King's most favored lords were allowed into his card parlor. An invitation was a mark of great favor. Surely this brought Robert a little closer to having Luca in his arms again. He tried to keep the mingled hope and relief from showing on his face. 

“His Majesty honors me,” Robert said. “Lead on.”

  
  


Robert followed the footman through a labyrinth of corridors that wound through the heart of the Summer Palace. The ceilings soared and the walls were set wide enough to allow a carriage parade to pass through. Still, the clutter of art and statuary, the tapestries and gilt and marble and murals of fat angels gamboling through candy-colored clouds—there was just too _much._ The excess made Robert feel strangely claustrophobic. He was relieved when they reached a set of double doors opened by two bowing servitors.

The parlor was dim and smoky, lit by a fireplace crackling with pinewood. Hunting trophies glared glass-eyed from above the mantle, still redolent with animal musk. Tobacco smoke hung in the air in thick foggy curls. Robert squinted through it to see men sitting around card tables, drinking and talking over each other. Only Grandfather sat alone, perched primly on the most uncomfortable chair and scowling at a book on law. When Robert entered Grandfather glanced up over his reading glasses. Robert could have sworn he saw the faint glimmer of approval in his eyes. But Grandfather said nothing, only made a dry little cough and returned to his book.

“Robert d'Argent!” a familiar voice bellowed. Robert caught sight of Lord Grosvenor waving from across the room. His jolly face was split in a grin. Robert broke into an answering smile. Even if Grossie wasn't Hugo or Val, he was still a friend, and Robert realized with a start just how lonely he had been in the months since Grandfather decided to ruin his life. 

Grossie was sitting at a table with four other lords, all of whom Robert recognized vaguely. Grossie pushed out the empty chair at his right and gestured to it with a sweep of his arm. “Go on, then, plop yourself down!” 

Robert did so and was rewarded with a slap to the back that left him gasping. “So good to see you, old boy!” Grossie roared. “Now, introductions! To your left is Monty Peverel – Lord Peverel's son, you know.” Monty nodded stiffly, moving his cards closer to his chest. “Here's good old Algernon Cocteau – you'll have heard of his uncle Egbert, he's the Royal Ambassador.” Moon-faced Algernon gave Robert a vague smile. “And Algie's cousin Northrop.” Northrop was fanning himself with his cards. He smirked, revealing teeth as white and regular as the picket fences in Peachtree Square. “And Damon Courbet,” Grossie concluded. “Grand Commander Courbet's eldest son, you know.”

A dark-haired man with a blunt, handsome face gazed levelly at Robert from across the table. He had a swordsman's hands, the crude bulk of his arms tapering into delicate wrists and long, fine fingers. Robert found himself admiring the deft skill with which Damon flipped and shuffled the deck of cards from palm to palm without ever looking down. 

“Shall I deal you in?” asked Damon, sounding as though he didn't much care one way or another.

“Oh, Robert is a proper plunger,” Grossie boasted. “Why, I had to help him out of a spot of trouble not too long ago, didn't I, old boy?”

“Fortune has been against me lately,” Robert said, and gods, wasn't that the truth.

Monty and Northrop, clearly dedicated gamblers, made luck-signs over their cards. Algernon yawned. Damon leaned forward in his chair with a kind of lazy deliberation. A few flicks of his fingers and Robert was looking down at a fanlike spread of cards.

“What's the game?” Robert asked, opening his hand.

“Trifle,” said Damon. “Ante?”

“You must give me a chance to win White Lightning back, North,” Grossie pleaded. “It's only fair.”

Northrop sighed theatrically. “Fine. Grossie's stupid racehorse goes back in the pot, then.”

Robert almost choked. White Lightning was a three-time champion in the Games. He must be worth a fortune. Had Grossie really lost him in a game of _Trifle_?

“In that case, I'd better throw in my chariot,” said Grossie. “With the charioteer, of course.”

“Algernon?” Damon drawled.

“Oh – my pleasure barge, I s'pose,” said Algernon carelessly.

Damon turned to Monty, who squinted at his cards. “I've a girl, Brenna. Irjivish. Lovely thing. Dark eyes, great tits. Not a day over sixteen.” 

“Just a minute, man!” cried Grossie. “That's hardly fair to old d'Argent here. He's got no use for the wench!”

Grossie clapped Robert on the shoulder for emphasis. When Robert regained his breath, he managed to wheeze, “Brenna? A – are you talking about a slave?”

Monty scowled. “I'm married. I've a son. It's hardly a scandal for me to keep a few women about the place.”

“Yes, but think of the rest of us,” sighed Grossie. “Poor bachelors that we are.”

“My uncle would flay me if he found out I was keeping a woman,” said Algernon sadly. “I'm under strict orders to make do with boys until I've produced an heir.”

“Some at this table are quite pleased to make do with boys,” said Northrop. He looked pointedly at Robert. “As for myself, I prefer girls. Discreetly, of course.” He dropped his voice. “I know a place in Paradiso—”

“ _Northrop!_ ” said Algernon, scandalized. “You're not even engaged!”

Northrop shrugged. Algernon's expression warred between disapproval and awe. Grossie was studying his cards with an innocence that fooled no one. Robert guessed that the brothel he'd found Grossie passed out in front of had female whores on the menu as well as boys.

“Monty's girl will go in the pot,” Damon announced. That seemed to settle the matter. The lords turned to Robert, expectant. 

“Well, old boy?” said Grossie cheerfully. “What's your ante?”

Robert's mouth went dry. He didn't want to think what Grandfather would do to him – to Asher, to _Luca –_ if he lost a chariot or a barge in a card game.

“On second thought, I'd better sit out this round,” Robert said, trying to sound regretful. “My grandfather would throw an apoplexy if I lose my shirt again.”

“Commendable restraint!” Grossie roared, slapping the table with an open hand. “What a portrait of discipline! You're an example to us all. Why, I'm so impressed that I'll ante up for you. Let's say, the new foal White Lightning's dam is about to drop?”

Robert blanched. “Oh, really, Grossie, you needn't—”

“Nonsense,” said Grossie, waving the matter aside like a fly. Robert opened his mouth to protest, but Damon Courbet was already turning up the first trump. 

Whatever Grossie thought, Robert was not a gambler. He had played a few hands with Francis, or as a prelude to a fuck at one of the gentleman's parlors, but he was well aware he had no skill nor the inclination to acquire any. Now Grossie's generosity loomed over him, a debt unspoken but mutually understood. Every time a card was dealt Robert felt fresh sweat bead on his forehead. He would have cheated had he known how. Instead Robert played as conservatively as he could, never raising, only taking or laying down a card when he was sure of his hand. It seemed to be a good strategy, or at least not a bad one. He saw Monty and Northrop glaring at him peevishly when they thought he wasn't looking.

Despite Robert's care, the first round went to Damon Courbet. Monty cursed. Damon collected their cards with implacable calm and dealt again.

“So, Courbet,” said Monty, casual tone turning bitter in the air. “How fares your sister?”

Damon stiffened. Robert saw his own shock reflected on the faces of the other lords. Clarissa Courbet was rarely brought to Court and never let out of her mother's sight. At first glance, Clarissa appeared to be an unusually pretty young woman with flaxen hair and a face as sweet and rosy as a porcelain doll's. Closer scrutiny, however, revealed the slackness of her features, the innocence in her wide blue eyes, the way she bounced on her feet and cooed to herself. Grand Commander Courbet's daughter was as simpleminded as a child. Courtesy forbade Clarissa's condition from being spoken of; in doing so, Monty had just committed a major breach of Court decorum. For a moment, Robert thought Damon might hit him.

“She's fine,” said Damon shortly. “Clarissa is – fine.”

“Do you know, I've just had a letter from my cousin Vernon!” Grossie blustered. “He's still honeymooning in Iberia, the old dog. Probably recovering from the wedding. Bloody exhausting affairs, weddings. Why, his wife—Libby Fulke, you know—insisted on a nine-hour ceremony! I ask you!”

“I heard Vern came out all right,” said Algernon, seizing on the change of topic. “Didn't His Majesty let him choose a boy from the Royal Seraglio as a wedding present?”

Robert jerked his head up. His first thought was _Gods, not Luca—_ but no, he'd seen Luca just that week, crawling behind the King on a leash of fine gold chain. Robert never thought that memory would be accompanied by a rush of relief. But if Luca was still in the seraglio, and the King was gifting boys to favored lords as wedding gifts…Robert reeled with sudden, heady possibility.

“I hadn't heard about that,” Robert said, keeping his tone light, even. “Any boy he wanted?”

“Oh, yes, marvelous generosity, don't you think?” Grossie beamed. “Gave Vernie pick of the litter. Almost enough to make you want to tie the knot yourself, eh, d'Argent?”

“Almost enough…” Robert echoed. He looked down at his cards. The joker grinned up at him, doffing a harlequin hat. He looked rather like the King. 

Robert laid his hand down on the table. “I fold. Sorry, Grossie.” Before Grossie could reply, Robert had pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “Well-met, my lords. If you'll excuse me, it's my hour to retire.”

“So soon?” Grossie cried, dismayed. “Really, old boy—”

But Robert was already striding across the room to where Grandfather sat, absorbed in his book. Robert coughed. Grandfather flicked up a glance.

“Have you lost your purse already, my son?” he sighed.

Robert inclined his head towards the door. “A moment, my lord?”

Grandfather raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment. He tucked the book into his breast pocket and pushed himself up, huffing a little as he transferred his weight to his cane. He followed Robert out of the card parlor and down the hall until they reached an alcove behind a plaster bust of King Edmund. 

“Withdrawing from His Majesty's parlor before you've spent even an hour at the table? Really, Robert, you have no talent for polite company at all—”

“I want to marry Estelle Fontaine,” Robert said abruptly, cutting him off.

Grandfather narrowed his eyes. “I would rejoice at the sudden change of tune, Robert, but alas, I know you too well. What price do you expect to exact for your newfound compliance?”

“Only your blessing,” said Robert, trying to look innocent.

Grandfather snorted. “There is a colloquialism I believe is often applied in such situations. Ah, yes: pull the other one.”

Robert raised his hands in mock defeat. “Fine. Asher's almost well enough to go home. I want you to set up a trust for his family so that he won't be sold again the next time his father loses money on a horse.”

“Though the prospect of financing a pack of overbred slum-people does not exactly fill me with the warm glow of benefaction, your terms are, I must admit, remarkably fair.” Grandfather sniffed. “Almost _too_ fair. May I ask what effected this remarkable turnaround?”

“I spoke to Estelle,” Robert replied, not untruthfully. “She is...a remarkably persuasive woman.”

“In other words, she promised to let you keep as many boys as you like.”

Robert spread his hands. “As you say.”

“While I would, of course, prefer you had a _chaste_ marriage, as I did and my father before me, I suppose I will have to settle for seeing you married at all,” Grandfather sighed. At once, he became businesslike. “I shall convey the offer of matrimony to Lord Fontaine.”

Robert struggled to keep the warring emotions from his face. _You asked for this_ , he reminded himself. It didn't make the pill any less bitter to swallow. Gods, how many times had he sworn never to marry? And here he was, rolling over for Grandfather like a dog. 

Robert shook his head. _No._ He had to remember who he was really doing this for.Robert thought of Luca leaning into his touch like a flower starving for the sun; then Luca limp, silent, on his knees in the ring while the gladiator rutted on top of him. He remembered Luca whispering, _Don't forget me?_ Robert would have to cut out his own heart before could forget. He _would_ make Luca his. Nothing mattered but that.

“Splendid,” Robert said, and meant it.

“It should only take a few weeks to settle the terms,” said Grandfather, half to himself. “Old Fontaine will no doubt dig his heels in over the lesser provincial properties, but I'll make him see reason. After all, he has no son to leave them to, and Estelle is nigh on six-and-twenty; he won't get better terms than ours. Yes, if all goes well we ought be able to announce the happy news by the Fall Regatta.” Grandfather gave a sharp nod, matter settled. “And now you will accompany me back to the parlor, my son. After all, it would be thoroughly unbefitting for the heir of House d'Argent to end his evening after only one hand of Trifle.”

Robert grinned despite himself. “I thought you didn't approve of gambling, Grandfather?”

“I certainly do not,” Grandfather sniffed. “But it won't do at all to let the lords believe you folded due to insufficient funds. I wouldn't be able to keep my head up at Council should rumor begin to circulate that House d'Argent has gone bankrupt. I know how young Grossvenor gossips.” Grandfather flared his nostrils. “No, you shall return and play at least three more rounds. You'll need a purse to bet with, of course. Let's say – a thousand crown?”

Shock rocked Robert back on his heels. His back hit the bust of King Edmund, making it sway alarmingly. Robert managed to choke out, “I – ah – yes, I think a thousand crown should cover a few hands of Trifle.”

“Excellent.” Grandfather rapped his cane and cleared his throat. He squinted up at the ceiling. When he spoke, his voice was rough with some unnameable emotion. “You know, of course, that I am – I am very – well. This is very welcome news indeed. It's relief that you've finally come to your senses, my son.” 

Robert would have sworn that for a moment he saw pride light in Grandfather's eyes, as clear and bright as a hearthfire in winter. Then it was gone again as quickly as it had appeared, and Robert was left with nothing but the promise of Luca to keep him from despair.

  
  


 


	36. Chapter 36

 

Luca was being fucked again.

He couldn't remember how many times this made. There was so much cum inside him that it ran down his legs every time the gladiator pulled out and squelched like a marsh when he pushed in. Even the King's indefatigable erection had wilted after hours of drilling into Luca's mouth and ass; he was sitting cross-legged on his vast desk, watching the gladiator take Luca on the floor with the keen interest of a sportsman. Attendants and petitioners came in and out of the receiving room with various items of Court business, giving the entertainment a wide berth. The King listened, signed papers, or threw things, depending on his mood. Luca kept time by the door swinging open and closed, open and closed. 

This gladiator wasn't as big as Ged, but he had a hairy low-hanging belly that scraped Luca's front with every thrust. He smelled, too, a pungent mixture of body fluids and rotting teeth. Every time he exhaled it was like Luca was back in the fuckhouse again with another filthy workman humping him. He thought he'd left that behind years ago. Strange to come so far only to end up back where he started.

At least this gladiator didn't have Ged's reservations about using a boy. He rutted into Luca with all the enthusiasm of a dog mounting its bitch and required nothing more from him than limp compliance. After the King's gymnastics, it was almost restful. Luca was able to attend to the conversations floating above him: troop movements at the border of Guye, the effect of this year's poor grain harvest on the market, a new exotic for the King's arena or menagerie. The men discussed everything from petty gossip to affairs of state and paid no mind to the whore being fucked at their feet. They never imagined that Luca listened and remembered every word.

The door swung open. The gladiator thrust, grunted. Luca watched through his lashes as two sets of fine buckled shoes crossed the room and their owners made obeisance before the King. 

“Lord Courtney!” the King roared happily. “And I see you've brought young Adrian – what a treat!”

“Pretty,” the gladiator panted in Luca's ear. “Pretty, so fucking pretty.”

Luca turned his head so that he wouldn't get the man's fumes up his nose. From this angle he could see the lords from the knees down and the King's bare foot dangling over the edge of his desk. Luca didn't dare lift his eyes any higher, so he imagined faces for the lords to match their voices. The older lord talked of new ships for the King's navy with the glibness of a pimp hawking a boy and never missed an opportunity to flatter; he would have a pinched, canny face and skin like yellowed paper, Luca thought. The younger lord was more difficult. He stayed mostly quiet beside the elder, speaking only to insert some quip or a clever, cutting remark. He would be homely, Luca decided, with bulging eyes that saw the faults of everyone around him and a thin mouth twisted in a sneer.

“Pretty,” groaned the gladiator as his hips stuttered and he spurted his completion inside of Luca.

Luca remained motionless as the gladiator's cock softened. The man sighed contentedly. He ran his hands through Luca's hair and petted his face. Luca could feel cum and lube soaking the tiles under him. He hoped the King didn't make him clean the mess with his tongue. Men always loved seeing Luca on his knees lapping cold spunk from the floor. At least the King might not want to fuck his mouth after.

“Why did the show stop?” the King asked petulantly. “Make them do it again!”

The gladiator moaned. He must be almost as sore as Luca by now. He stirred, pumping weakly, but it was clear that he didn't have the King's superhuman endurance. His flaccid prick slid out of Luca's hole and he couldn't get himself stiff enough to shove back in.

“Oh, never mind,” the King grumbled. 

Guards pulled the gladiator off Luca and dragged him away with his crotch still sticky. Without the gladiator's bulk heaving on top of him, Luca could see the lords up to the shoulder. Their clothes were as fine as their shoes. The younger had delicate hands accented with a diamond on each finger. Luca thought of Boq's sharp rings scraping his rectum. His mouth went dry.

The older lord and the King continued their discussion. Since Luca had not been dismissed he remained on his back with his arms hooked under his thighs to spread himself. He could feel the weight of the younger lord's eyes on him. The King hadn't shared Luca with a lord yet, only other slaves. His Majesty kept a stable of stud slaves for novelty: a beautiful Carthagian with blue-black skin, a Caledonian scrawled with blue tattoos from his scalp to the soles of his feet, identical triplets with identical cocks, an otherwise unremarkable man whose penis was pierced from tip to balls with thick silver rings. Odd that the Beast hadn't ended up in the King's stable. He would fit right in.

Luca was so distracted by the thought of the Beast that he almost missed the King's signal: a flick of two fingers. Luca scrambled into position, kneeling up with his thighs spread, fingers laced behind his head, eyes down, mindful to keep a straight line from his shoulder to his knees.

“So? What do you think of him, gentlemen?” The King's tone was jolly. “My Golden Bird.”

The lords murmured approvingly. Luca could feel mingled fluids seeping down the backs of his legs. He wondered that anyone could find him attractive like this. Robert – _No_. Luca had no right to think about Robert now. Not when he'd been fucked raw and put on exhibit for his master's guests like the prize bitch he was.

“He's quite the loveliest favorite I've had,” the King declared. “Have you ever seen such sublime perfection? Face up, boy, let them have a look at you.”

Luca did so, bringing both lords into his line of sight. The older lord was fatter than Luca had imagined, with beady little eyes sunk in pouches. The younger—Luca's breath caught. Even unmasked, Luca recognized the dandyboy from Bacchanal, the one who'd had his head in Robert's lap. He wasn't homely at all, but dark and delicate as his jeweled hands. He took Luca in with cold green eyes, mouth quirked in amusement, fingers tapping a staccato on his folded arms. Luca was horribly aware of the cum on his face, the rings through his nipples, his red, swollen mouth. The immaculate lord and the Paradiso fucktoy. If Robert saw them like this, the lord so clean while Luca dripped spunk on the floor, he wouldn't even look twice before taking the lord into his arms again.

“The boy's beauty is beyond compare,” said the older lord. Courtney, the King had called him. “Lord d'Argent was generous indeed.”

“All Court was shocked by his liberality,” said the younger lord – Adrian – mildly. “My lord is not known for being particularly... _enlightened_ in these matters.”

“I say Robert d'Argent has been an emancipating influence on Old Bob!” the King declared. He snatched a goblet of wine from a waiting servitor and quaffed it. “And not a moment too soon. Now that deBorse is off in Saxamy, I need at least one adviser who hasn't got a stick up his ass. Speaking of which—” He snapped his fingers at the rank of silent servants. “Fetch a dildo. I want to watch my pretty present fuck itself.”

There was a flurry of activity, invisible to an outsider; a moment later a servitor dropped to his knees behind Luca and fixed a dildo to the floor under him. Luca had not been given the order to break position, so he had to lower himself onto the dildo without using his hands to steady it or dropping his gaze to judge the angle. His thighs trembled with the strain. As the bulbous head entered him, Luca's breath hitched. He was thankful then for all the seed that slicked his passage. The thing was huge.

“I hope His Grace's business goes well in Saxamy,” said Lord Courtney conversationally. “The trade routes are nigh on impassable this time of year.”

Luca rocked back, forcing himself down another inch. Sweat pricked his temples. He could feel Lord Adrian watching him with idle, catlike interest.Luca told himself that it didn't matter, that a hundred men had seen him like this since breakfast. It didn't matter. He didn't matter. He was a toy, a doll. He was nothing at all.

“Yes, well.” The King sighed loudly and gestured for more wine. “DeBorse's reports have certainly been...interesting.”

Luca had managed to read a little of those reports when the King bent him over his desk. Their subject was a certain Saxam princess of marriageable age. The Pig – deBorse – had enclosed a sketch drawn by his own hand. The girl was harelipped, bucktoothed, and decidedly vacant in expression. The King had been thunderous that she had been offered for consideration at all. Secretly, Luca thought he was relieved. The King had already dismissed all of the other eligible women presented to him, and had the princess been even a little good-looking he would've been hard pressed for a reason to turn her down.

“Speaking of Saxamy, Majesty, if I may bring your attention to another small matter of business concerning the Royal Navy—” Lord Courtney began, leafing through the pages of his folio.

The King rolled his eyes. “Say, Adrian, what do you make of all this twittering about an engagement between Robert d'Argent and Lord Fontaine's daughter?” he said abruptly.

Lord Adrian had been watching Luca impale himself on the dildo. Now his head jerked up and his mouth thinned. When he spoke, his voice was cool. “I defer to Your Majesty's opinion in all things.”

“Oh, come now, that's no fun!” said the King, wagging his finger. “You know his lordship more intimately than any man at Court, if my informants tell me true.” He tipped his head coquettishly. “Quite intimately _indeed_ , they say.”

Luca and Adrian tensed at the same time. Luca grit his teeth against the punishing stab of pain from the dildo. _Relax_. He flexed, pushed down another half-inch. Gods, how big _was_ this thing?

“One makes many alliances at College,” said Adrian carefully. “I am pleased to see Lord d'Argent so often at Court these days. As for Estelle Fontaine?” He shrugged. “Well. A sheath for every dagger, Majesty.”

Lord Courtney shot him a horrified look, but the King's laugh was delighted. “Naughty, Adrian!” he crowed. “Very naughty!” He tapped his nose. “I'll wager a night with the Golden Bird that Robert d'Argent will be married by May.”

Lord Adrian looked at Luca, sweating and shivering and dangerously close to tears. He smiled. “An excellent wager, Majesty.”

Luca took his weight off his knees and sank deeper, grinding down mercilessly until he felt the base of the dildo flush against the sore, stretched ring of his asshole. He had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out. It was good, the pain. It gave him a narrow, white-hot focus. He rolled his hips, let the burn ripple through him. _This is where you belong,_ Luca told himself. _This is what you are._

  
  


The King had Luca fuck himself on the dildo long after Lord Adrian and Lord Courtney were dismissed, until Luca's chest was heaving and his body wracked with cramps. He forced himself up and down, trembling, clammy, each gasp a swallowed scream, as the King made leisurely conversation with the Royal Astronomer about which robe the stars foretold he should wear to the Games that week. Finally the King drank another dram of wine with that strange spicy-sharp smell and revived enough to fuck Luca through three more orgasms. Afterward, Luca was sent away in the same breath as a plate of roasted swallow's tongues.

Luca was taken to the bathhouse and washed under Aquila's imperious gaze. The sexless attendants scrubbed him until he felt almost clean. He was even able to rest a little, spread out on his stomach on the low table while a servitor rubbed salve around the rim of his anus. When fingers pushed inside, Luca was so loose it barely registered. _Sloppy whore,_ he thought, but he was too exhausted to feel the stab of disgust those words deserved.

After the bath and the salve Luca was allowed to retreat to the dark alcove where the fish-pool cast ripples of light on the walls. He sat hugging his knees and rocked a tight little circle, back and forth. Smudge appeared, questing for the crumbs he was accustomed to Luca scattering for him.

“I don't have anything for you today,” Luca whispered. “I'm sorry.”

Instead of flicking his tail and disappearing into the reeds, Smudge touched his nose to the surface. _Like a kiss,_ Luca thought. When he scrubbed his hand across his face he couldn't understand why it came away wet.

A shadow fell over Luca. He looked back over his shoulder to see the eunuch guard carrying a dinner bowl. Luca got to his feet slowly, mindful of his overtaxed muscles and the deep, bruised ache in his ass. He took the bowl and leaned against the curved wall of the alcove. The guard stood at attention, angled so that anyone who happened to glance over wouldn't guess they were talking together.

Luca made his report, picking through the bowl so it would look like he was eating. When he mentioned Lord Courtney and the Royal Navy, the guard's expression shifted. It was the first time Luca had ever seen the guard react. _That must be important,_ Luca thought. He felt a surge of pride, then squelched it. He'd just used his ears while getting fucked. Anyone could do that. No reason to start thinking he was important or special or good for anything but spreading his legs.

Still, Luca couldn't stop himself from asking, “Please, sir, may I see my lord soon?”

The guard's curt shake of the head would've had Luca struggling not to cry once. Now he felt nothing but the echo of despair.

“Too dangerous,” said the said guard, just like the last dozen times. Luca heard a note of pity in his voice and he flushed with shame. Stupid whore, smitten with a lord. Even the guard knew it was pathetic, and he probably hadn't even _met_ Lord Adrian. Or Lady Estelle, whoever she was. The King never displayed Luca when women were present. When Luca tried to imagine Robert's intended, she had Lord Adrian's face.

“Yes, sir,” said Luca, dropping his eyes.

“You should eat that.” The guard jerked his chin at the bowl. “Aquila thinks you're trying to starve yourself to death. He'll have you force-fed if you lose any more weight.”

Luca blinked. That was the most the guard had ever said to him at once. He looked down at the bowl. Hot rice mixed with chunks of beef and vegetables. Luca would've done anything a man wanted for a meal like this once. He'd done anything a man wanted for _less_ , for scraps, for crusts, for food Master Trainer had pissed on. Now the thought of eating turned his stomach.

“Yes, sir,” he said again. It was usually the right answer.

When the guard left, Luca sat back down by the pool. Smudge swam up to greet him. Luca turned his dinner over into the water and watched the fish gobble it up. 

  
  


 


	37. Chapter 37

 

“…and then that stupid Thracian _feints_ at the boar, see, like so.” The King demonstrated the move with the drumstick he was wielding. “But the boar is too cunning for him! He sees an opening and—” The King jabbed his drumstick. “Guts the man like a fish! Oh, it was _too_ funny. We laughed and laughed, didn't we, Robert?”

Robert turned up the corners of his mouth. It would look like a smile to the lords who were watching. “Yes, Majesty.”

The King slapped Robert's back and guffawed. “Wine!” he shouted, waving his cup. “Now, the next gladiator had more brain…”

Luca stepped forward with a jug of wine to fill the King's cup. Robert couldn't help flicking little glances over, no more than seconds at a time. Long enough to see the teeth-shaped bruises on Luca's collarbone, the red imprint of a hand on his rump, the _piercings—_ everything the King would have to pay for someday. All the reasons why he had spent the morning at House Fontaine, listening to Grandfather and Lord Fontaine bicker over dowry and estates and trying not to scream with impatience.

The King snaked his hand down to give Luca's bottom a sharp twisting pinch. Luca's expression didn't change. He stood perfectly still, eyes cast down, as the King mauled at his ass. 

Robert realized he was digging his nails into his palm hard enough to break skin. He tore his gaze away. _No_. Watching the King molest Luca led only to nausea, self-loathing, and excessive drinking, the latter generally followed by hangovers during which Grandfather had a nasty habit of shouting at him. Robert fixed his gaze determinedly on the square of tilework under his right foot and tried very hard to pretend that the King was not pawing at Luca within the span of his fist.

“I'm sure Robert d'Argent will agree with me on this, being a swordsman himself,” the King continued, fingers dipping lower to do something unspeakable between Luca's legs.

Robert used the focus rage gave him to perform a rapid mental review of the past few minutes' conversation. “Of course, Majesty,” he said. “Had the gladiator made a cutting downstroke instead of attempting a glissade, he could have caught his opponent unawares and finished him.” 

“You see!” The King slapped Luca's ass before shoving him away. Luca fell to his knees and folded his hands behind his back in one graceful movement. “I believe a demonstration is in order. Someone fetch Lord d'Argent a sword.”

Robert had no time to talk his way out of it. Within moments a servant had appeared at his elbow, presenting a blade on a velvet cushion. The instant Robert picked up the sword his hesitation vanished. It was a longsword, heftier than Robert was used to but tapering to a point so fine it seemed to melt into air. He flexed his wrist, adjusting to the weight, the balance. The world narrowed to the slender length of steel. Robert found himself entering en garde almost without conscious thought.

“The gladiator attempted a flèche—” Robert made a brief leap before moving into a lunge. “But he wasn't fast enough.” He turned and dropped a shoulder, jumping back, then straightened his sword arm. “His opponent evaded and caught him, so.” He made a riposte. “His blow was glancing. The gladiator stumbled, but recovered. They sparred, thus—” Robert demonstrated attack and counterattack, shoes squeaking on the marble floor. “The gladiator landed a hit across his opponent's chest.” He slashed the sword in a rough diagonal. “He saw an opening.” Robert lunged. “But he should have cut, so.” He slashed again at a different angle. “His opponent moved in.” He advanced. “And dealt the killing stroke.” A swing of the blade, arcing up before striking almost vertical. Robert finished on one knee, both hands gripping the sword hilt.

The King burst into applause, and the lords followed suit. “Marvelous! Simply marvelous!” The King bounced in his seat, squirming with excitement. “Where is Damon Courbet?”

Damon stepped forward and sketched a bow. “Here, Your Majesty.”

“Now, Damon,” said the King, steepling his fingers. “You have a reputation among the young lords as a crack swordsman. If I'm not mistaken, you are currently undefeated?”

“Your Majesty is never mistaken,” said Damon. He looked at Robert levelly; his expression betrayed nothing.

The King clapped his hands. “A match!” he declared. “Damon Courbet against Robert d'Argent. The loser shall not show his face in Court for a week.”

Robert's immediate instinct was the throw the match on purpose. But no, that would hardly advance him in the King's favor. If he won, however…Robert felt a sudden, wild hope.

“As I have often pointed out to Lord d'Argent, a stick without a carrot will not move one very far,” Robert said smoothly. “May I be so bold as to suggest that Your Majesty take the opportunity to demonstrate his generosity by offering a reward for the winner?”

“Cheeky, Robert!” the King chortled, wagging his finger. “Very cheeky! But you're right, of course. We must sweeten the pot.” The King's eyes alighted on Luca. “And what could be sweeter than the choicest of pots?” He grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled Luca to his feet. “Hear ye, hear ye, lords and gentlemen! Let it be known that the victor of this tournament will win a night with the Golden Bird!”

Robert's breath caught in his throat. His eyes met Luca's, so huge and dark they seemed to swallow his face. Gods, he looked _blank_ , as though he didn't even recognize Robert. Robert winced to see the marks on Luca's lip where he had bitten, or been bit. And his whole mouth was swollen, as if—Robert refused to speculate. He wouldn't be able to keep himself from thrusting his sword through the King's heart, right after cutting off his grabby fingers and giving him several stabs in the crotch for good measure.

Luca dropped his gaze, and Robert forced himself to look away. It wouldn't do to linger on Luca, not with Grandfather watching. Gods, had Grandfather _heard_? Robert sought him out among the ranks of lords. There he was, face pinched and grim as an undertaker's. When he caught Robert's eye Grandfather twisted his hands over the top of his cane in one sharp gesture. Robert remembered the gladiator snapping the thief's neck. Grandfather's threat came back to him with punishing clarity: _What a delicate boy he is. Limbs like glass. I expect they break as easily._

Robert exhaled raggedly. No, if Luca was under too strict a guard for Tolliver to arrange another meeting then he was certainly being watched too carefully for Grandfather to hurt him. It was an empty threat. Robert had to believe that, just as he had to believe that there would be a time when he and Luca could look into each other's eyes for as long as they wanted without having to worry about who saw.

Damon shucked off his coat and tossed it to a waiting servant. Robert remembered Damon's skill at dealing cards, the adroit gestures with which he'd shuffled and cut the deck. Would he touch Luca with the same deft remove? Robert thought of Damon's clever hands pushing Luca's legs apart and felt ill. He set his jaw. Grandfather be damned, Damon was _not_ going to have Luca. Not if Robert could help it.

A servant took Robert's coat and jacket and helped him into a leather-breasted doublet. The longsword was swapped out for a blunted foil with a rubber tip. Robert appreciated the absurdity of the King taking such care that no noble blood be shed when he regularly had gladiators tear each other to pieces for his amusement. Still, Robert was glad the swords had been changed. Damon would've been difficult to best with a heavier blade, but the light foil suited Robert, who would have to depend on art and speed in order to counter his opponent's superior strength. 

_Speed?_ Robert snorted. That was generous. Between Court and Asher he'd had precious little time to spare the last few months for practice. By contrast, Damon's experimental lunge and riposte proved that he was in excellent condition. _No doubt Damon has been spared the distraction of a foul-mouthed child prostitute,_ Robert thought sourly. But no, that was a poor excuse. If Robert lost the match – lost _Luca –_ he would have no one to blame but himself.

With that cheerful thought in mind, Robert and Damon took their places. Servants had cleared the floor; the bounds were marked with scattered petals. Lords made a ring around the makeshift arena. There was a holiday mood in the air. Robert wondered briefly if that was what the gladiators saw when they looked at him: just another blithe spectator waiting to be entertained.

Damon may have been in better shape than Robert, but he wasn't eager to tire himself out. His advance was cautious, almost lazy. They parried, a smooth, unhurried exchange, each getting a feel for the other's reach, his footwork. When Damon lunged next it was in earnest. He was fast, more so than he'd let Robert believe. Robert was faster, but only just; he felt the buffet of air from the edge of Damon's sword. His retort was sloppy, and Damon parried easily. They fell back, circled, then engaged again.

Damon may have been keeping back some of his skill, but Robert's reflexes were still honed fine. The first point might never have been made if the King hadn't laughed just as Robert turned aside in preparation for a balestra. Robert couldn't stop himself from glancing over. The King had Luca in his lap, legs spread wide. He was playing with the rings through Luca's nipples, yanking and twisting them. Luca's lips were parted. His eyes were shadowed, vacant. When the King reached down to tug the ring between Luca's legs, Robert almost dropped his foil. Damon took advantage of Robert's distraction to lunge. The rubber point of his sword struck Robert's chest.

“One to Courbet!” the King crowed.

Damon's smirk was like an itch. Robert bit back a curse. 

This time Robert was determined not to lose concentration. He let his surroundings fade away until he was deaf to anything but the sound of metal on metal, blind to everything but the bright streak of the foils cutting through air. Damon's hit had made him confident. He was aggressive, attacking with a series of lunges that pushed Robert to the very edge of the ring. Robert parried, but he was thrown off balance. He stumbled to the side. Damon lunged again. Robert feinted, sliding his blade down Damon's; he used the shift in balance to grab the hilt of Damon's foil, pull him to, and land a strike between his ribs. Damon cried out, more in shock than pain.

“One to d'Argent!” The King jigged with excitement. He'd grown bored of torturing Luca sometime during the match and had shoved him back to his knees beside the throne. If it weren't for the rapid rise and fall of Luca's reddened chest, Robert might have taken him for a statue.

The next bout was more like a quarrel than a conversation. Damon bared his teeth and brought his foil down in artless, cutting strokes. Robert's strike had been a piece of luck, but he wouldn't need to rely on chance again. Damon wasn't used to being bested. It soured his temper, made him sloppy. He lunged, leaving his breast open, and Robert struck. Even before the foil's tip met leather he knew that it would hit.

Robert's nerves were so on edge that the thunder of applause that followed made him flinch. He flinched again when Damon threw his foil to the ground in disgust.

“And D'Argent takes the bout!” the King shouted. “Oh, how _delightful_!”

Robert could afford to be magnanimous in victory. He held his hand out to Damon with a grin. “Call it a fluke,” he said. “We were evenly matched.”

Damon hesitated a moment before grasping Robert's hand. “No use for empty courtesy,” he said gruffly. “You bested me, d'Argent. I'll spend my week of disgrace in the gymnasium so that I can return the favor when I get back to Court.”

Robert laughed. “Oh, don't bother on my account.”

Damon allowed himself a tight smile. “I shall hope to find you rendered permanently weak in the knees after a night with your prize.”

Robert looked over to where Luca knelt, but he was gone.

  
  


Robert soon discovered that the King took hospitality very seriously indeed. He was ushered through gilded halls and into the guest wing, where a room had been prepared. It was the size of Robert's suite at House d'Argent and far more sumptuously appointed. There was even a bath sunk in the floor, deep blue and perfumed with jasmine. It was big enough to swim in. Robert remembered the river at Lord Frederick's country estate; he and the other boys would spend hours of summer playing in the water. He dismissed the servants, who seemed surprised to be turned out. Robert supposed their orders were to wait on him all night. 

Once the room was empty Robert stripped out of his sweaty clothes and jumped into the bath. The water was hot and bitter with salts, not at all like the river, but Robert had a fine time splashing around anyway. By the time he was finished his fingers had pruned and his ears were waterlogged. Robert climbed out and shook himself off like a dog. He felt thoroughly, deliciously drenched.

Robert dried his hair with a towel left on a table by the bath. There, on a tray, he found a discreet array of sex toys. Cock rings, plugs, clamps, beads, rubber balls on a string, lubricant in exotic flavors, dildos ranging from petite to monstrously oversized, as well as several objects so esoteric that even Robert, who considered himself something of a connoisseur, could not have guessed at their purpose. Robert's hand strayed to a ridged plug the size of his little finger. Adrian used to love it when Robert teased him with a plug while lapping and nipping at his rim. Robert thought of preparing Luca's hot little hole with his tongue, licking him deep, getting him wet and open before sliding in a finger, two, the muscles of Luca's passage clenching as Robert found his sweet spot, stroked, rubbed, took Luca's balls in his mouth, Luca's cock down his throat, sucked and fingered him until Luca came crying out his name…

Robert realized he was fondling the plug like it was flesh instead of rubber. He remembered Luca's empty expression, the bruises on his body in the shape of careless hands. _A slave must never feel pleasure while it is being used._ Maybe if Robert showed Luca how good this could be—

He wrenched his hand back. _No_. That was a terrible idea. Gods, had Robert forgotten that Luca had spent the last few months being ravaged by a lunatic? The last thing he needed was another man crawling on top of him, let alone the one man in the world who had promised not to. Robert dragged a screen over to hide the table. He didn't want Luca to see the toys and get the wrong idea.

That done, Robert went to dress. Here he encountered a problem: all his clothes were stiff and rank with dried sweat. He couldn't meet Luca smelling like a gymnasium. Robert thought for a wild moment of scrubbing his clothes in the bathwater. Then he looked over and saw a dressing gown hanging by the bath. Silver embroidery on green velvet, cuffed and collared with silver-black fur. Robert pulled it on and made a noise of delight. The lining was fur as well. When the material brushed Robert's groin he felt a shiver of arousal. Gods, what a luxury! To think Grandfather made them go around in boiled wool when he could have easily afforded to outfit the whole household in robes like these.

Robert found a decanter of wine chilling on the sideboard. He read the label and gave a low whistle, then poured himself a glass. When Robert turned, he started to catch sight of himself in a mirror. With his hair hanging damp around his shoulders, the robe open to bare his front, and a glass of wine in his hand, he actually looked as though he belonged amongst all this luxury. _I look like a prince_ , Robert thought in astonishment. For the first time in his life, he felt his rank.

A soft note chimed through the chamber. Robert started again, this time nearly spilling wine all over the robe. That must be Luca. Robert laughed aloud at the irony of Luca signaling his arrival while Robert awaited him inside. On a whim, Robert sat on the bed, a knee tucked under him. Luca had greeted him like this often enough. Robert supposed it was his turn now.

“Come!” he called.

  
  


 


	38. Chapter 38

There was a lord sitting on the bed. He held a glass of wine and wore a dressing-gown open to his navel. His eyes glittered in the lamplight like the edge of a sword. His mouth was quirked in amusement. Luca knelt instinctively, pressing his lips to the floor before sitting back on his heels. He spread his thighs wide, offering himself for the lord's pleasure.

“Luca?” said the lord in Robert's voice.

Luca shivered. He knew the lord and Robert were one and the same. So why couldn't he bring himself to raise his eyes?

“Come here, sweetheart.”

Luca crawled. He crawled until he reached the lord, then kissed the floor again. He wanted to kiss Robert's foot, to rest his cheek there, but Aquila had warned him against touching the lord without permission.  _None of your forward brothel ways in the Guest Bedroom, little barbarian._  Luca knelt before the lord and yearned for Robert.

“Luca?” Robert said gently. “What are you doing?”

Luca felt a calloused hand against his cheek. He forgot the lord and melted into Robert's touch. When Robert gathered him up in strong arms and pulled him onto his lap, Luca clung to him like a child.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Robert murmured, stroking Luca's hair. “You don't ever have to kneel for me.”

_I only want to kneel for you_ , Luca thought.  _Only for you._ As soon as the thought had come Luca dismissed it. What he wanted didn't matter. Stupidwhore, to have ever hoped it would.

“My lord has won this slave for the night,” said Luca softly, mouthing the words Aquila taught him. “I am your prize.”

Robert chuckled. He cupped Luca's chin and brought his face up so that their eyes met. Luca fought the urge to drop his gaze.

“My prize,” said Robert, voice rich with humor. “And what shall I do with you, then?”

Luca did drop his gaze, then. He shifted his weight so that he straddled Robert, ass pressed invitingly against his crotch. “Whatever my lord desires.”

A shadow passed over Robert's face. A moment later it was gone, his expression blithe and cheerful again. “In that case, I shall beg your advice on how to keep Asher from ripping up his homework. He has the attention span of a gnat.”

Luca thought of Asher bounding through the Harlequin, trailing trouble in his wake. Asher couldn't run now, not with his crippled leg. He must limp instead, shoulders hitched like Lord Fulke's with a pain that never faded.  _All your fault_ , Luca reminded himself. As if he could ever forget.

“Is he – is he all right?” Luca asked. His voice sounded strange to his ears, rusty from disuse. “Asher, I mean. Is he happy?”

“He'd be happier if I stopped chasing him around with grammar worksheets.” Robert hesitated. Then, “I suppose it would be cruel to ask if you're happy here.”

Luca took a shuddering breath. “I'm always happy to serve my master,” he said, yanking at his hair. “I live to please him. I—”

Robert caught Luca's hands in his own. “Hush, now. You don't have to say those things. Not to me.” He brought Luca's hands to his mouth and kissed them. “Have you forgotten? I love you.”

In the months they'd been apart Luca had played the memory of what Robert told him in the Harlequin so many times he could remember the exact inflection in Robert's voice when he said  _I love you_ , the way his eyes had flashed when he promised  _There's no one but you_. Luca thought of Lord Adrian, so handsome and clean; he thought of Estelle Fontaine.  _Robert d'Argent will be married by May_. And Adrian had watched Luca fuck himself and laughed…

“You do know I love you.” Robert's brow was furrowed. “You believe that, don't you, Luca?”

“Still?” Luca blurted. “Even after – after watching him –  _touch_ me and – the things he does—”

“It doesn't matter to me,” Robert said firmly. Then he grimaced. “Well, all right, every time he puts his damn hands on you I want to cut them off.”

Luca giggled weakly. “I don't think your grandfather would approve.” He went on without thinking, “But I suppose Lord Adrian would be impressed.”

Robert's eyebrows shot up. “Lord Adrian? How do you know about Lord Adrian?”

“It's all right,” Luca said quickly. “I don't mind. He's so beautiful, and he's a noble, and I can't—” A sob rose in his throat. “I can't be what he is. I can't give you what he can.” He forced himself to smile. “I'm glad. Truly.”

Robert was shaking his head. “I told you that I don't have any other lovers,” he said, almost chiding. “That hasn't changed. Lord Adrian and I were involved before I found you. I might even have made the monumental blunder of giving him another chance. As it is, you saved me from making an ass of myself.” He kissed Luca's cheek. “Another reason to be grateful for you. I ought to make a list and read it off every time you go all self-deprecating on me.”

Luca felt his cheeks flush. “I don't deserve you,” he whispered.

“You deserve so much more than you realize, Luca,” Robert sighed. “I only wish I could give it to you.”

The dressing gown was still open at Robert's neck. Damp red hair swirled around his nipples, trailing down his abdomen. Robert's pulse fluttered at his throat. It quickened when Luca brushed his fingertips across the burnished plane of Robert's chest. Robert made a noise.  _Forward brothel ways_ , Luca reminded himself. He couldn't bear to take his hand away.

“Can I kiss you now?” he asked instead.

Robert answered by bringing their lips together. He tasted sweet, like wine. Luca pressed his body to Robert's, skin to skin. He could feel the gallop of his heartbeat echoed in Robert's breast. Robert tangled his fingers in Luca's hair and pulled him close. Luca felt that dreaded heat rise between his legs and whimpered. Robert pulled back.

“Too much?” Robert's eyes were glazed, unfocused. “I can stop if—”

“Oh,  _please_ don't!” Luca grabbed at Robert's shoulders, shivering when the muscles flexed under his hands. “I can control myself, swear it.”

“I don't want you to control yourself,” Robert said raggedly. “I want to see how much you want this.”

Robert rolled his hips as he spoke. Luca felt the thick outline of Robert's erection slide along the crack of his ass. A shock of needjolted through him. He exhaled in a hiss.

“I want you,” Luca whispered. “I want it. I do.” Though he'd said those words a thousand times, he'd never meant them until now.

Robert lay back on the bed, pulling Luca over to straddle him. Luca's hands hadn't left Robert's shoulders; at this angle, it was almost like he was holding Robert down. Robert was so tall, so strong, a  _noble—_ he could have Luca beaten for this impertinence, or killed; he could pin him to the mattress and show him what an uppity slave deserved. But Robert was grinning, cock hard, and Luca knew he wouldn't do any of those things. Luca was  _safe._ The thought made him lightheaded. His nipples tightened into nubs. Robert made a noise of approval. He reached up and circled Luca's nipples with his fingertips. They were still tender from the King's rough treatment earlier. When Robert touched the rings Luca flinched.

“You really hate them,” Robert said quietly.

Luca looked away. “They're ugly.”

“No part of you could ever be ugly,” Robert said, and he sounded so sincere that Luca almost believed him.

Luca took a deep breath. He said in a rush, “When you were – um. With the sword? I liked it.”

Robert grinned. “You liked seeing me fence?”

Luca's blush deepened. He nodded. “Your  _face_ , you looked…”

“Go on,” Robert said, rough with arousal.

“Fearless.”

Robert ran his hands up Luca's thighs. “What else did you like?”

“Your body,” Luca said before he stop himself. “I – your body was – you were sweating, Robert, your shirt was sticking to you – your chest, your back – the way you  _moved_ —”

Luca realized that he was circling his hips unconsciously, grinding down on Robert. Robert panted, hot and moist against Luca's neck. His hands moved through Luca's hair, across his ribs, down his thighs. He hooked his fingers into the spangled sash Luca wore; Luca lifted up to help him pull it away. When the air touched his prick, Luca gasped. He wasn't hard, not that,  _never_  that, but his prick flushed the same dark pink as his cheeks and chest. Robert took two palmfuls of Luca's ass and squeezed. Luca moaned, wet and wanton. He thought of Robert's cock in his mouth – the rich musk and salt taste of him, the burst of bitter fluid on his tongue. He moaned again, feeling utterly debauched.

“You have such a beautiful cock, Luca,” Robert panted. “Gods, you're so fucking perfect, all of you, I can't believe you're mine—”

“I  _am_ yours,” Luca said fiercely, gripping Robert's shoulders. “Only yours, Robert, master,  _please_ —”

Robert bucked up and gave a hoarse shout. Luca felt stickiness spread under him and realized that Robert had come. He bore down, riding Robert through the aftershocks, then shifted his weight so he wouldn't put unwelcome pressure on the cock going soft under him. At the Harlequin he would've been punished for making a patron finish so quickly; the men always preferred to come inside him, or else spill across his ass or on his face or in his hair. Luca liked it better this way. But any way Robert wanted to take him, Luca knew he would like.

Robert was still gripping Luca's ass, stroking and kneading. Luca wished that Robert would dig in harder, leave bruises in the shape of his fingerprints and welts to show where his nails had raked skin. He wanted to be  _marked_.

“Well, this is embarrassing,” said Robert. “I swear I usually last longer than thirty seconds.”

Luca laughed. He felt fizzy all over, wild with joy. Robert  _wanted_ him. Truly wanted him, even though Luca was a slave and a whore and a slut who couldn't control his prick. Robert thought Luca was beautiful, perfect. Robert had come just from the friction of their bodies moving together. Luca called Robert  _master_ and Robert wasn't the least bit angry at his presumption. He hadn't even shoved Luca away when he was done with him. It was like the dream Luca used to have when he was little, a child's fantasy of being bought by a kind, gentle owner. He'd always been brought back to reality by a kick or a slap or a patron punishing him for not being eager enough. But Robert was _real,_ and he wasbetter than any dream.

“I love you,” Luca said. “I love you, Robert.”

A smile bloomed on Robert's face. “And I love you.” His smile became wicked. “Now. Your turn.” He leaned up, muscles shifting under Luca's palms, and traced a slow trail around his chest with the tip of his tongue.

Luca gasped. “R-Robert—”

“You like that?” Robert murmured. He lapped at Luca's nipples, then took the sensitive buds between his lips and sucked until Luca was breathless. He teased each one to a white-hot point of sensation. When he took the rings between his teeth and tugged lightly, Luca's head fell back. His nerves were afire. He shuddered, helpless, as desire burned him alive.  _Use me,_ he wanted to beg.  _Fuck me,_ own  _me_. But he could only make mewling noises and writhe on Robert's lap.

Robert lifted his mouth from Luca's chest long enough to say, “Gods, you're fucking gorgeous like this.”

Then his hand was on Luca's prick and Luca was back in the training house with Master Trainer's fingers rubbing mercilessly against that bad place inside until Luca's body betrayed him and that  _thing_ happened, he was swelling in the cage –  _Such a slut for it, hole –_ and punished an instant later by the bite of a thousand metal teeth until there was nothing but the smell of blood and the sound of screams and someone begging, “I can't, please don't make me, I'll be good, swear it, can't – don't –  _please_ —”

And Luca was in Robert's arms again, shaking and sobbing and pleading for mercy that he knew would never come. Robert was saying “I'm sorry, I'm sorry” over and over, and Luca knew that was wrong, he was the one who'd been bad, he should be asking for Robert's forgiveness, not the other way around. He tried to explain but his words came out as incoherent whimpers.

“Don't try to talk,” Robert said, and Luca, grateful for the order, didn't.

Robert rocked Luca back and forth, stroking his hair and murmuring apologies, as Luca huddled against his chest and tried to make his body as small as possible. Luca was distantly aware that he ought to be ashamed, but he couldn't bring himself to care about anything outside the safety of Robert's arms.

“I am an ass,” Robert said, voice low and bitter with reproach. “I shouldn't have touched you like that without asking. It was an unforgivable violation, and you have every right to be furious with me.”

“Not – n-not angry,” Luca managed to choke out. “Sorry, Robert, I'm so s-sorry, I t-tried to be g-good for you—”

“You  _were_ good, sweetheart,” Robert said, brushing Luca's hair back from his forehead. “I'm the one who fucked up again. And don't say I didn't,” he added as Luca opened his mouth to protest. “If you start hyperventilating, I've obviously done something wrong. I didn't know – ” He cut himself off with a curt gesture. “But I did know, didn't I? You told me that you weren't allowed to get hard. I didn't think – well, I just didn't  _think_. Damned arrogant bastard I am, I thought if it was  _me_ touching you…” He trailed off. Then, softly: “Luca, who taught you that it's wrong to respond sexually when a man touches you?”

Luca caught a stray curl between his fingers. “I learned at the training house.” He pulled hard enough to rip hair loose. “I am very fortunate that Master Trainer was so patient with me. I was lazy and stupid and unworthy of his attention.”

Robert was clearly struggling to keep his expression even, but his eyes were wide with dismay. “How did he train—”

“Please,” said Luca, desperate. “Please don't ask.”

Robert held up his hands. “You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, sweetheart.” He waited a moment for Luca to absorb the enormity of this promise before saying, “Can I ask a different question?”

Luca nodded. He felt young and stupid. “Yes, Robert.”

“Do you come when you masturbate?”

Luca shook his head vehemently. “No! SwearI don't, I haven't – by the Lady, I swear I never,  _never_  have!”

“Wait,” Robert said. “You've never – not even by yourself? You haven't touched yourself or had an orgasm at _all?_ ”

Luca shook his head again, close to tears. “It's dirty,” he said. Seeing Robert's expression, he hastened to add, “Not for you! Not for real people. But for me to do that, it would be terrible _._  It would be bad.” Robert was looking at him with alarm. Luca wanted to kiss Robert, suck him, offer his ass to be fucked. Anything to make Robert stay. “I liked it when you came,” Luca said desperately. “I loved it. I live to please you, master.”

“Not master,” Robert said through his teeth. “ _Robert._ ”

Luca felt his stomach twist. “You don't want to be my master?”

“Yes – I mean no – I mean—” Robert made an exasperated gesture. “I want us to be –  _together_. Equals.”

“But I'm not your equal,” Luca whispered.

“You are in every way that matters,” Robert said firmly.

Luca had to stifle a gasp. No. Robert couldn't possibly mean that. Robert was handsome and brilliant, the kind of man that someone like Lord Adrian would want for a lover. Luca was so thoroughly ruined that even the Goddess had turned her back on him. Men only wanted Luca so they could use his filthy body for the one thing it was good for. Robert ought to despise him. Instead he was saying absurd, impossible things, talking about _together_ and  _equals_  as though he really believed it could be true. Luca wanted to tell Robert that there had been a mistake, that Robert had been tricked somehow into believing Luca was worth anything but contempt. But if he did, Robert's eyes would cloud over, his expression become cold and distant as he realized what an enormous error he'd made in treating a slave like a person. Then he would punish Luca for deceiving him, and it would be far worse than Master Trainer, worse even than the Pig, because Robert would go away after, and this time it would be forever. Luca couldn't bear losing Robert again. He wouldn't survive it.

“Luca?” Robert's brow was furrowed with concern. “Are you all right?”

“I just want to be yours,” Luca said, hating the broken note in his voice.

“You are,” Robert said, as though it were simple. “You will be. And I'll be yours.” He looked at Luca, gaze searching. “Do you understand?”

_No,_ Luca wanted to say.  _You don't understand at all._  Instead he smiled and nodded. “Yes, Robert.”

Robert's brow uncreased, but his face remained overcast by an emotion Luca could not name. “I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted,” Robert said with forced cheer. “Shall we put this bed to its intended purpose? Its  _other_ intended purpose, I mean,” he amended hastily, seeing Luca's expression.

Luca giggled, then sobered when he realized what Robert meant. “Sleep in a  _bed?_ ”

“That is what they're for,” Robert pointed out. “Aside from, you know. The other thing.”

“I never have,” Luca admitted, reddening. “Slept in a real bed, I mean. I've done – well, the other thing. But the man always put me on the floor afterward.”

Robert looked shocked. “Even Lord Frederick?”

“He liked to keep me with him, but I never slept. I was too afraid.” Luca attempted a smile. “Anyway, Master Frederick snored.”

Robert laughed. “Well, I promise you, no man has ever brought allegations of snoring against me.”

Then Robert rolled Luca onto his back, and for a moment Luca was back in the fuckhouse hallucinating that the man over him was Robert. But no, it  _was_ Robert, bright-eyed with mischief. He leaned down and pressed his lips to Luca's. No one had ever kissed Luca like Robert did, sweet and slow and gentle. It was as though Robert didn't care about all the filthy places Luca's mouth had been. He still thought Luca was worthy of kissing. Luca knew he wasn't, but he couldn't help tangling his fingers in Robert's hair and pulling him deeper. Oh,  _Lady_ , let him die like this, with nothing else in the world but the taste of Robert's tongue and the warmth of Robert's breath.

Luca didn't die, and the kiss ended. Robert nuzzled down Luca's neck. He stroked Luca's cheek, sighing in contentment. Luca felt Robert's lashes flutter against his throat. Within minutes Robert's breath slowed and he sank like a stone into sleep. He lay flush against Luca, one of his hands spread on Luca's stomach and the other still cupping his face. Luca was used to having men on top of him, but Robert didn't crush him or press into him or grind him down onto the mattress. Robert only slept, spooned around Luca. They fit together so perfectly. Luca wished they could touch like this always.

When he was sure that Robert wouldn't wake, Luca slid his own hand between their bodies until he could feel Robert's heartbeat. He knew he wouldn't sleep –  _couldn't_ , not in a bed, not with a man so close, not even if the man was Robert. But Luca was glad of it. He had the steady rhythm of Robert's heart under his palm, the weight of Robert's body against his own, and he didn't want to miss a moment.

 


	39. Chapter 39

Robert woke to empty arms and an empty bed. The sheets beside him were still warm; he could smell Luca on the pillow. Luca must have slipped away not long ago – summoned by the King, no doubt, impatient for his morning rut. Robert touched the dip in the bed where Luca had lain. He wanted to cry.

“My lord?”

Robert sat bolt upright. Luca was kneeling by the bed, hair mussed and loose over his shoulders. He held up an enormous breakfast tray so heavily laden with food that his arms were shaking.

“I hope I got it right,” he said seriously. “I told Aquila you liked coffee, but I wasn't sure what roast, so there are three pots. And cream and steamed milk and sugar, of course. I know you prefer dry toast, but I thought I'd better ask for butter and marmalade to be sure. There are croissants—chocolate, like the cake you brought me, remember?—and sausage, fried bread, tomatoes, eggs, and, oh, tea, too. I asked for black pudding, I know it's your favorite, but Aquila said black pudding is peasants' food and the Palace chefs wouldn't have the least idea how to make it. There's bread pudding, though, and oat pudding.” He looked up, anxious. “Is this all right?”

Robert realized that his mouth was hanging open. He was so sure that Luca had been taken away again. Now, seeing him, Robert was so relieved that he seemed to have forgotten how to speak.

Luca's face fell. “No, of course not. I forgot the jam. Please, I can ring the kitchens if you'll let me, I can make it right—”

“Never mind the jam,” Robert said firmly, finding his voice. “This is perfect, sweetheart. You've done so well.”

Luca beamed. Robert reached down to shift the tray to the bed, grunting a little at the unexpected weight. Gods, this thing was heavy. How long had Luca knelt there holding it up while Robert slept heedless above him?

“Here.” Robert patted the sheets beside him. Luca lit up. He scrambled onto the bed, careful not to jostle the tray, and burrowed in beside Robert. With Luca's naked body pressed so close, Robert became uncomfortably aware of his morning erection. He shifted, bringing a thigh up to to hide the way the sheet tented at his crotch.

Luca brushed Robert's knee with his fingertips, the gesture a question. When Robert quirked a brow, Luca tipped his face up hopefully.

“I haven't brushed my teeth,” Robert warned.

Luca shook his head. “I don't care.”

Robert had less confidence in the state of his breath, but Luca's parted lips were too sweet an invitation to resist. He leaned down and took Luca's mouth, drinking down his sigh of contentment.

“You didn't have to bring me breakfast, you know,” Robert murmured, stroking Luca's cheek. “It would've been enough just to wake up next to you.”

Luca looked up anxiously. “I shouldn't have moved without permission—”

Robert silenced him by pressing their lips together. He licked into Luca's mouth and sucked lightly at his tongue. Luca went boneless against him. When Robert drew back, Luca's face was pink, his eyes half-lidded. He looked like a painting in the Royal Gallery done in shades of rose and cream.

“May I prepare your coffee?” Luca asked shyly.

Robert nodded, pushing himself up against the pillows. “The darkest roast, if you please.”

Luca crawled over to the tray, giving Robert a delicious view that did absolutely nothing to help with his hard-on. Luca busied himself pouring coffee and cream into a china cup, brow knit in concentration. He turned to Robert and presented the cup between two outstretched hands. Robert took it, trying clumsily to affect the same ceremony. When he saw what was inside he laughed with delight. The cream had been poured to shape the silhouette of two doves with their wings outstretched.

“I feel guilty destroying such a work of art,” Robert said. “Where did you learn to do that?”

Luca ducked his head to hide his blush. “The training house.” Robert stiffened as Luca's hands went to his hair, but only combed his fingers through. “I was taught how to attend my master in the morning,” Luca went on, and Robert didn't miss the slight, purposeful emphasis on  _my master_. “I can dress you, too, if you like. The servants brought a fresh suit of clothes.”

Robert felt a twist in his chest at the unwelcome reminder that he would have to leave this room eventually – leave  _Luca_. Gods, he would rather cut off his own leg. Sending Luca back to that lunatic would hurt as much, a bloodless agony that killed slower but no less surely.

“There's a letter for you,” Luca said quietly, nodding at the tray. Robert saw a roll of parchment tucked between the salt and pepper shakers. “I should've told you first thing. I just—” Luca bit his lip, hands knotted in his lap. “I don't want you to be fetched away,” he whispered, as though admitting something shameful.

Robert found that his mouth had gone dry. He picked up the parchment. The wax was stamped with the King's seal. Not promising. Robert broke it with a thumbnail and unrolled the letter. He read silently, the furrow in his brow deepening with every word.

“The King is holding audience in the Grand Council Chamber at noon,” he said finally. “He's commanded my presence.” Then, feelingly, “ _Damn_.”

For a moment Luca looked utterly devastated. His fingers tightened in his hair. Then his face went as pale and blank as carved porcelain. “That's all right. I'll see you at Court.” He tried to smile. “Maybe the King will even let you have me again.”

Robert felt something clench in his chest. “I promise you, Luca, I'm doing everything I can—”

“I know,” Luca said softly. “I trust you.”

“There's enough time for breakfast,” Robert said with forced cheer. “Are you hungry?”

Luca started to shake his head, then paused. “Yes,” he said, sounding surprised. “Yes, I am.”

Robert made a sweeping gesture at the tray. “Where shall we begin? Croissant? Sausage? Your choice.”

“Oh—” Luca gazed at the food with wide-eyed dismay. “Please, Robert, it's too much. You should decide. It's your breakfast.”

“And I'm sharing it with you,” Robert said. He pulled the robe around him and climbed out from under the blanket. Luca scooted back to make room for him beside the tray. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

Luca tucked in his chin. Robert took that as a yes. He picked up the teapot and poured a steaming, fragrant cupful.

Luca jerked his head up. “Oh, please! You shouldn't serve, that's for me to do—”

“Nonsense,” said Robert brusquely. “Sugar? Honey?” Then, when Luca stared speechless, he decided, “Both.”

Luca took the cup as though he expected it to bite him. At Robert's encouraging nod, Luca brought the cup to his lips and sipped. His lashes fluttered. He drank deeply, face rapt with bliss. It was almost enough to make Robert jealous of tea.

While Luca drank, Robert tore the corner off a croissant and slathered it with butter. When Luca put down his cup Robert presented the croissant piece. “Eat.”

Without missing a beat, Luca leaned forward and took the croissant from Robert's fingers with his teeth. He ate slowly, savoring. Once finished, he bent down again and carefully licked the chocolate from Robert's fingertips.

“Thank you,” Luca murmured, sitting back on his heels.

Robert tried to respond, but all that came out was a strangled noise. He cleared his throat and tried again. “My pleasure.”

Luca touched his lips. “So that's what butter tastes like,” he said, almost to himself.

Robert wanted to smack himself for not thinking to give Luca butter before now. “Do you like it?” he asked.

“It's wonderful,” Luca said, a true smile breaking across his face. “Almost as wonderful as chocolate.”

Robert laughed. “Gods, I would feed you chocolate all day if I could. We need to fatten you up, sweetheart.” He looked at Luca's sharp hipbones, his birdlike clavicle, and sobered. “Are they giving you enough to eat here?”

Luca nodded vehemently. “Yes, all the time. It's just – ” He hitched his shoulders up. “I haven't been very hungry, that's all.”

Robert thought about the King dandling Luca like a doll in front of all the lords and forcing him to spread his legs for gladiators on command. It would be enough to kill anyone's appetite.

Robert drew himself together. He couldn't delay this any longer. “Luca, there's something I need to tell you.” A flash of terror crossed Luca's face before he could school his expression back to neutral. Robert took a deep breath and said in a rush, “I'm engaged to Estelle Fontaine.”

Luca looked relieved. “Oh, I knew that.”

Robert started. “You know?How—” But of course. Gossip must have reached the King by now, with Luca listening at his feet. “Ah,” Robert said, feeling like a fool. “You're not angry?”

“Angry at  _you?_ ” Luca sounded shocked. “Never, Robert. I couldn't be. Besides, nobles always wed.” He shrugged. Then a thought came, clouding him over. “But – Lord Adrian, you said – I mean, you aren't—”

“Lord Adrian is not, and never will be, my lover,” Robert said firmly. “I only love you.”

“Then it doesn't matter who you marry,” said Luca simply. “Not to me.”

“I thought the King might offer you to me as a wedding present,” Robert admitted. “Rather a hare-brained scheme, I know.” He sighed. “All my schemes are these days.”

Luca shook his head. “Maybe if I fell out of favor? I could be bad, I could misbehave if you just tell me what to do—”

“No!” Robert ran a distracted hand through his hair. “Gods no. Whatever you do, don't make him angry.”

“I would do anything,” Luca said fiercely. “I know I'm not brave, not like you, but I would do anything, Robert,  _anything_ to be yours.”

“You're the bravest person I know,” Robert said. When Luca shook his head, Robert caught his face in his hands. “ _Yes_.” He kissed the tip of Luca's nose. “Before you, I hid behind Grandfather and tried to lose myself in wine and boys. Whatever courage I have is your doing, Luca.”

Luca brought his hands up to to hide his red cheeks, but Robert held his chin and kissed him again. “All yours,” Robert said, and meant it in every possible way.

Luca hesitated, then blurted, “When you were fencing, I – I thought—” He went even redder. “It's silly.”

“Go on.”

“You looked like Melchior,” said Luca sheepishly. “When he found Ganymene being taken on his altar.”

“The god of avenging justice,” said Robert, grinning. “I like that. And I suppose that makes you Ganymene?” He tucked a lock of hair behind Luca's ear. “I always thought Ganymene was a bit of a sop, to be honest. He was never as bright as you, or as kind.” He traced the delicate curve of Luca's cheek. “Or as lovely.”

“You'll offend the gods,” Luca whispered.

Robert pressed a kiss to the soft place between Luca's neck and jaw. “Let them hear,” he murmured. “Ganymene was mortal once. He'll understand.”

Luca shivered, at the blasphemy or the kiss Robert didn't know. Robert nuzzled Luca's neck and breathed in the sweet scent of him. It took an exertion of will not to let his hands stray to Luca's chest, his back, lower. Luca touched Robert's arm with light fingertips, tracing the lines of his muscles.

“You are so strong,” Luca said. “Like Melchior in the storybooks.”

“There are different kinds of strength,” Robert said. He took Luca's hands in his own. “I need your strength, sweetheart. I need you to be strong for me. To – to believe in me.” Luca was looking at him in confusion. Robert fumbled on, “I worry, every day, that you've waited too long. That I've taken too long, and you've given up on me.” He silenced Luca's protests with finger to his lips. “You said you would do anything?”

Luca nodded fervently. Robert felt like an utter bastard for manipulating him like this, but Luca was too pale, too thin, his eyes too hollow, and Robert would not,  _could_ not, lose him.

“Then I need you to eat,” said Robert. “And you have to sleep. Prove that you have faith in me by taking care of yourself.” He forced himself to add, in tones as stern as he could manage, “That's an order.”

Robert wasn't prepared for the relief, the  _gratitude_ , that washed over Luca's face. “Yes, Robert, I understand. I'll do whatever you want. Thank you, Robert.”

Robert realized that when Luca spoke his name with such reverence what he was actually saying was  _master_. He groaned inwardly. Now was not the time to broach that particular subject. He doubted that Luca would accept anything he'd have to say on the matter, anyway.

“Good boy,” Robert said instead. He tried not to wince when Luca beamed at the praise.

Clearly eager to prove his obedience, Luca didn't object when Robert buttered another chocolate croissant for him, though his eyes went wide. He ate with small, deliberate bites, watching from under his lashes as Robert made short work of three cups of coffee, all the fried bread, and most of the sausages. Luca timed each bite so that he finished when Robert did. He licked his fingers clean and sat back on his heels. Robert rewarded him with a kiss.

After breakfast, Luca fetched the suit of clothes delivered by the Palace servants. Robert was not surprised to find that Luca was almost as adept at dressing him as Tolliver. Of course, Robert's cock had never stirred to life at Tolliver's touch against his skin. Much to his relief, Luca didn't take his erection as a demand for sexual service. Instead he tucked Robert into his breeches chastely and laced him without once brushing the straining outline of his cock. When Luca helped Robert into his shirt, his hands idled on Robert's chest, his back, the ridged lines of his stomach. Luca's breath caught. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. Then his eyes seemed to shutter; he shook his head, a minute jerk of his chin, as if to tell himself  _no_. Robert wanted to tell Luca that he could have anything, everything, that no pleasure should be denied to him, but he couldn't find the words. Luca buttoned Robert's shirt, pulled on his tailcoat, and tied his cravat with quick, efficient movements. There were no more lingering touches.

“There,” Luca said, stepping back. “You look so handsome, Robert. Like a prince.”

Robert remembered thinking so the night before while gazing at himself in the mirror. The man looking haughtily back at him had seemed the very image of the noble Grandfather had always wanted him to be. Now Robert felt every inch a bootboy again, playacting in borrowed clothes.

Robert saw that Luca was trembling, thin arms wrapped around his body as though trying to warm himself. His eyes were dark, lip bloodied between his teeth. Robert drew Luca close and pulled the coat around them so they were cocooned. Luca buried his face in Robert's chest. Robert could feel his shoulders shaking with sobs. He pressed his lips to Luca's forehead. There was nothing to say, no promises that hadn't been made a thousand times before or pretty lies that would make their parting any easier to bear. All Robert could do was hold Luca as though he would never have to let him go.


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been far, far too long -- almost a year, in fact. Were there world enough and time, I still wouldn't be able to apologize enough. Suffice it to say that I am truly, deeply sorry for the delay. I've finished my first year of graduate school and am entering my first year of teaching, the result of which is no time, no money, no fun, and lots and lots of stress.
> 
> Chapter 41 has been written and beta'd and will be posted next Wednesday.
> 
> Thank you all for your patience. I know I haven't deserved it.

 CHAPTER 40

 

By the time Robert reached the Grand Council Chamber, it was already five past noon. Fortunately, the King had yet to arrive. Robert had only a moment to take in the crowd of lords abuzz with anticipation before a clawlike hand closed on his shoulder.

“So pleased that you could drag yourself away from your whore's bed long enough to grace His Majesty with your presence,” Grandfather drawled. The dark pouches beneath his eyes told of a sleepless night, and he was leaning on his cane more than usual.

“He's not my _whore_ any longer, thanks to you.” Robert spat the word with all the disdain he could muster. “He belongs to the King. And, really, Grandfather, you ought to be pleased. A night with His Majesty's favorite is a great honor.”

“The Golden Bird is hardly just a favorite,” said Grandfather between clenched teeth. “As you well know.”

“Would you have me refuse the King's generosity?”

“I would have you remember the consequences for disobedience.”

Robert stiffened, then forced himself to relax. “Empty threats, Grandfather. The seraglio is nearly as well-guarded as Abysm. You can't touch Luca there. And even if you could, we both know you'd never deliberately upset the King.”

“Oh, you learn fast, my son,” said Grandfather, voice low and dangerous. “Unfortunately, you seem to forget just as quickly. Your whore is not the only wretched creature whose well-being depends upon your good behavior.”

Robert caught his breath. “Asher—”

“In perfect health,” said Grandfather with a careless gesture. “And all the better for being back in that Lower District hole from whence he came, according to Tolliver's report.”

“You sent him _home_?” Robert's voice rose to a squawk. “But he's not ready, he's still using a crutch, the stitches have only just come out, he hasn't even finished his new phonics primer—” Robert swallowed. “You didn't give me time to say goodbye.”

Grandfather snorted. “The little rat hardly shares your fondness. He was so eager to leave, one would've thought he was being held at House d'Argent against his will.”

Robert was about to retort before it struck him that Grandfather wasn't wrong. After all, Asher _had_ considered himself a kind of prisoner, hadn't he? And Robert, with his scolding and spelling lessons, was just another jailer. Asher had always wanted to go home. He was probably thrilled to be shot of Robert, with his drinking and his moods and his constant, pathetic mooning over Luca. Robert wouldn't mind being shot of himself.

“You promised to send him to school,” said Robert stiffly.

“A missionary school in Cheapside,” said Grandfather. “I trust that meets with your approval?”

Robert nodded. Despite last night's charmed sleep in Luca's arms, he was suddenly, inexplicably exhausted. For a moment he entertained the idea that all of it—the duel, breakfast, _Luca_ —had all been some mad dream.

But no. Robert could still catch the faint scent of Luca where his hands had lingered on Robert's collar. Luca was real. He was the only real thing Robert had left.

There was a sudden clamor of trumpets. The curtains around the royal dais drew back and the King was carried out on a litter borne by four strapping gladiators. His Majesty wore robes of state, blue velvet trimmed in ermine; he waved the royal scepter like a conductor's baton. The gladiators sank to their knees, and the King disembarked the litter. The assembled lords bowed as one. Robert would have liked to stay upright, a middle finger extended in a crowd of toadies, but he had enough sense to scrape with the rest.

“My lords!” boomed the King. “How splendid of you all to gather here in order to hear my little announcement. Why, I'm quite touched.” He pressed a hand to his breast. “No doubt your curiosity has been mounting. What news could your beloved liege have to bring you? Wait no longer, my lords. It is with great pleasure I now announce that I am to be wed!”

The choking noise that Robert made was swallowed up by a great cheer that swept through the chamber. He swung around to look at Grandfather and choked again to see the old man's look of utter shock.

“Ah, but how one mystery gives way to another!” The King tapped the side of his nose. “Now you're all agog trying to guess the identity of my intended. Shall I tell you?”

The crowd roared again. Under other circumstances Robert would have rolled his eyes at the King's theatrics, but now he could find no humor in the situation at all. A royal wedding could founder all their plans. No one would dare marry until the King had, for fear of seeming to offer competition.

And though Grandfather was back to stony-faced, Robert had not missed his astonishment. Lord d'Argent, spymaster and Chief Adviser, hadn't the faintest idea what the King's announcement was going to be. The news that Eustace was finally to marry was as much a shock to him as it was to Robert.

The King raised his hand. The room fell silent at once.

“Lords of Lyonesse, I present to you—my Queen!”

Behind the King, the dais curtains opened once more. A figure appeared in the shadows, flanked by attendants. As she emerged onto the dais, Robert was not the only lord who had to stifle a gasp. The King's intended was none other than Clarissa Courbet.

The Grand Commander's daughter was, as always, accompanied by her mother on one side and a businesslike nurse on the other. Both kept a firm grip on her wrists— _To keep her from bolting_ , Robert thought. Clarissa was smiling the fixed, sulky smile of a child made to sit too many hours for a portrait. Though she was breathtakingly lovely in the rose-colored silks reserved for betrothed noblewomen, the effect was not of a Queen-to-be, but a little girl playing dress-up. There was something horribly familiar about her glazed eyes and slack mouth, the tremor in her hands. With a start, Robert remembered Maman sprawled on a chaise after taking her “medicine.” Had Clarissa Courbet been drugged?

“This alliance shall reforge the ancient bond of loyalty between House Courbet and the royal line of the true LeRoys,” said the King. He spoke in the stilted tones of one reciting from a script. “The union of our two Houses heralds the coming of a new Golden Age!”

Applause resounded through the hall once more. Robert brought his hands together mechanically. If they made any noise, he did not hear it.

 

“Clarissa Courbet?Are you _sure?_ ”

It was, by conservative estimate, the ninth time Tolliver had asked that question. Were Robert not struggling to uncork a perversely narrow-necked wine bottle he might have made a rude remark. Instead yanked, swore, and growled, “Eustace has gone completely insane.”

“This is certainly…unexpected,” Tolliver admitted. “And you are certain that Lord d'Argent had no idea?”

The cork finally gave way with a satisfying pop. Robert took a long, deep swig of blood-warm wine. “None,” he said after swallowing. “It's the only time I've ever seen him caught off his guard.” A moment Robert might have cherished under other circumstances. “But why Clarissa, for gods' sakes? She's a simpleton. And why _now_? The Council has been trying to pressure the King to marry for years.”

“Grand Commander Courbet is married to Lady Orania Courbet, formerly Orania van Tussen,” said Tolliver slowly, tapping two fingers against his temple in a gesture Robert had come to recognize as him thinking aloud. “Lady Orania's brother is Count Thijs van Tussen of Hanhaven.”

“Fascinating,” said Robert sourly. “All the excitement from those long-ago genealogy lessons with Grandfather is simply flooding back.”

Tolliver gave him a long-suffering look. “The King of Hanhaven was struck with pox a few weeks ago. His eldest son, Floris, has become ruler in all but name. Prince Floris was raised as a foster son in the van Tussen household. The Count has the Prince's ear as your Grandfather has the King's.”

“And Hanhaven has ships,” Robert finished.

“Exactly.” Tolliver's tapping intensified. “Guye is vulnerable to attack by sea. Philip has no navy. The King knows that. According to recent intelligence, almost the entire martial treasury has been poured into the building of warships. If the King was planning a final assault on Guye, it would come from the coast—the Southern coast. A short trip for the fleet of Hanhaven.”

“How could Grandfather know nothing of this?” Robert demanded.

Tolliver shrugged elaborately. “Perhaps his network at Court is not what it used to be. House Courbet has long rivaled House d'Argent for royal favor. Simpleton or no, Clarissa has been slated to marry the King since the day she was born. Grand Commander Courbet must have seen his advantage and pressed the match.”

“But surely that's good news for us, isn't it?” said Robert eagerly. “If Grandfather's power is waning—”

“I didn't say that Lord d'Argent was any less powerful, Robert.” Tolliver's tone was scolding. “Nor any less dangerous. If his presence in the Summer Palace has dwindled, that may simply mean that his attention has shifted elsewhere. His resources have doubtless been allocated accordingly.”

“Guye?”

“It's possible.”

Robert took a deep breath. “Luca—”

Tolliver made a noise of frustration. “Do you think of anything else?”

“Not really, no.”

Tolliver waved his hand. “You cannot ask me to account for details after delivering information that could very well change the shape of the game. Now, listen to me,” he said, raising his voice over Robert's protestations. “ _Listen_ to me!Throwing a fit will not help your precious barbarian, Robert, nor will it aid your friends. The only way to ensure their lasting safety – and your own – is to put King Philip on the throne of Lyonesse.”

“If I have my history right, you've been trying to do that for a decade,” Robert snapped. “You'll understand if I don't exactly overflow with confidence.”

Tolliver sighed. “And yet I find myself in the rather awkward position of having to invest absolute confidence in you, if we are to proceed along the path that has been laid out for us.”

Robert took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I realize that you enjoy nothing more than delivering cryptic pronouncements, Tolliver, and I hate to rob you of your fun, but if you don't say what you mean I may be forced to brain you with this wine bottle.”

“I will not ask you to assure me of your loyalty to our cause,” said Tolliver, spreading his hands. “I know that in this matter, you are no more loyal than a soldier of fortune. Instead of a purse, however, your allegiance is bought with a promise.”

“Luca.”

“Yes.” Tolliver raised a brow. “Would it surprise you to know that it is this which assures my handlers that you are one of the most trustworthy agents in our employ?”

“What, the fact that I'm _not_ a zealot? That seems an unlikely criterion for trust.”

“Zealots can only be trusted until their zeal runs out. Faith is ephemeral; collateral is concrete. Philip was a soldier. He knows their minds.”

Robert snorted. “I'm no soldier.”

“Aren't you?” Tolliver's smile was a slight, sly curve of his thin mouth that made Robert distinctly uneasy. “This boy. Would you kill for him?”

“Yes.” The answer came immediately, instinctively. Robert didn't even have to think.

Tolliver's smile deepened. “Without hesitation, I see.”

Robert looked away. “What does Philip want of me?”

“What is asked of you, when it is asked of you, without a moment's hesitation.”

Robert closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Tolliver was regarding him with an expression as smooth and mutable as mercury.

“You want me to kill the King,” said Robert.

He was not at all surprised when Tolliver said, “Yes.”


	41. Chapter 41

After his precious night with Robert—which in Luca's memory had the quality of a year and still felt far, far too brief—Luca had expected that the King would start sharing him regularly with other lords. His masters always passed him around, if they weren't already renting out his body. Luca knew that it was only a matter of time before the King did the same. He never would have dared to hope that Robert would be the first. It was a kind of virginity, for a whore. It was the only virginity Luca would ever have to give.

But the King didn't share Luca again. He even stopped letting the stud slaves fuck him. The King had begun to drink more and more of the spicy-sharp draught, and he insisted on having Luca close to hand at all times to slake his increasingly violent lusts. Luca was rarely sent back to the seraglio now. He spent the King's sleeping hours on his knees beside the royal bed so that the King could use him when he woke in the night with a raging hard-on. Days were also spent on his knees, ass or mouth stretched around whatever the King saw fit to fill him with.

Luca's only reprieve from relentless service was when the King was called away on wedding business. He'd exhibited Luca once when the delegation from House Courbet was present, and though no one dared complain while Luca was under the grand gold desk sucking His Majesty off, apparently disapproval had been communicated through diplomatic channels after the fact. The King threw a tantrum that ended with two servitors and a guard being tossed into the arena and Luca curled up under a chair while bits of smashed glass rained down around him. Still, the King had been shockingly quick to acquiesce after the initial fit of temper; during all subsequent meetings with the Courbets, Luca was left in the bedroom. Whoever the new Queen's family was, they must be horribly important.

Not that it was Luca's place to care about politics. He couldn't even report to the eunuch guard anymore. All that mattered now was that the King's meetings with House Courbet gave Luca a little time to clean himself—he was so filthy all the time now, thank the Lady that Robert couldn't see—and close his eyes. He couldn't really sleep, not when the King could return at any moment with a hard cock and a bad temper. Instead Luca sank into a sort of waking fugue that offered only slightly more rest than passing out. Fortunately, he had years of experience enduring the kind of exhaustion that made his vision go vague around the edges. The rare hour or two he had alone was enough for him to heal, and rock, and blank his mind until even the worst of the hurt was numbed.

It was only when Luca was left alone that he let himself think of Robert. He replayed their last meeting over and over again, until every word, every kiss, was etched so deeply into his memory that nothing the King did could erase it.Luca wanted so badly to be good for Robert, to show how obedient he was, how grateful for each and every order. _I need you to eat. And you have to sleep. Prove that you have faith in me by taking care of yourself._ Luca tried, really he did, but sleep was as impossible as growing wings and food felt like ashes in his mouth. Still, he was careful not to bite his lips or pull his hair or chew his fingers or throw up on purpose or do anything else that Robert would surely count as hurting himself.

 _Your body belongs to Robert_ , Luca told himself. _You aren't allowed to damage Robert's property._

It made Luca glow with secret pride to think of Robert as his master. He would prove that his faith was as perfect and resolute as – well, as Robert himself. Nobody could take that away. Not even the King.

 

The eunuch guard came for Luca while the King was at dinner with the Courbets. Luca was kneeling beside the King's bed, chin tucked to his chest so he could drowse without breaking position. There were only a handful of servitors in the room, all mute and unmoving. On another night Luca might've made up stories for them, imagining them all into tales of gods and heroes, but the King had just fucked him for hours without coming, ramming in and out until Luca was sure he would fall apart, and he no longer had the energy to imagine anything good for anyone, least of all himself.

When the guard entered, Luca registered him distantly, an unexpected change in the scenery. The guard murmured something to the chamber attendant. He gestured at Luca.

 _It's starting again_ , Luca thought dully. Again and again and again. The King would fuck him until there was nothing left to fuck. Then the silent servitors would scrub the stain of used-to-be-Luca from the floor, and nothing would be left to prove he'd ever existed at all.

“Come,” the guard said, crooking a finger at Luca.

Luca's legs almost buckled under him when he stood. He limped after the guard, trying to ignore the spikes of pain that lanced through his thighs and ass with every step. Maybe it wouldn't last as long this time. Maybe the King would only want his mouth. Luca had already swallowed so much cum today that his stomach felt bloated with it. He sent a quick prayer to Ganymene that he wouldn't vomit semen all over the King's lap.

Luca was in such a fog of exhaustion that he didn't notice the guard leading him down the back passage that wound past the seraglio and into the servants' quarters. It was only when the guard stopped in front of the door to the storage closet that Luca realized where they were.

“Oh,” Luca whispered. He hadn't felt hope in a long time. It was so fragile he ached.

The guard pushed the door open and shoved Luca inside. “Three minutes.”

Luca was in Robert's arms before the door closed. It must've looked like he was trying to _climb_ Robert, with his legs wrapped around his waist, arms around his neck, face buried in his shoulder, but Robert didn't seem to mind. He held Luca just as tightly.

“Missed you,” said Luca, because there were no words to describe the anguish of yearning for Robert until he shook with the force of his own need.

“Understatement.” Robert's voice was muffled in Luca's hair. “Gods, you feel good.”

“Then don't let go,” said Luca. He'd meant it in jest, but the tremor in his voice betrayed him. _Never let go. Please, please don't ever let me go again_.

Robert exhaled in a warm gust against Luca's forehead. “In a better world than this, I wouldn't have to.” He kissed Luca's cheek. “We'll live in such a world someday. I promise you.”

“I believe you,” said Luca, and he wanted it to be true with all his might.

Robert set him down gently, keeping his hands laced on the small of Luca's back. Luca was ready to blurt out that he hadn't been sleeping like Robert ordered him to, he was sorry, swear on anything, he hadn't meant to be bad—but then he saw Robert's face and the words died in his mouth. Fresh worry-lines were etched at the corners of Robert's eyes and in brackets around his mouth. His skin had a gray cast; his eyes were cloudy and red-rimmed. There was a tremor where he clenched his jaw.

Shock made Luca bold enough to ask, “Are you – Robert, are you all right?”

Robert gave a sharp bark of a laughter. “That's a surprisingly complicated question to answer, these days.” He let go of Luca and ran his fingers through his hair, raking it into two red wings. “We don't have much time. Well, gods know we never bloody do. I need to tell you – fuck, there's so much. Too much. I can't compromise you. You'll be kept out of this, they've promised me that. You'll be protected. Even if I – if the plan fails. That's the most important thing: your safety. I'll keep you safe, Luca, I swear it.”

Robert spoke quickly, words tumbling after and over each other. He leaned closer and closer to Luca during his nonsensical tirade, so that now their foreheads were almost touching. Robert's eyes were round, his teeth bared. He did not look entirely sane.

“I don't understand,” Luca whispered.

Robert took a deep breath and exhaled through flared nostrils. The feverish light behind his eyes cooled a little. He straightened, questing absently at the front of his vest for the cigarette case. He scowled to find his pocket empty.

“I've been given a – a task,” Robert said carefully. “If I succeed, things will become a great deal better for a great many people. We'll be together, Luca. Not for three minutes in a closet, but openly, _safely_ , for the rest of our lives.”

 _Together_. The prospect was too wonderful, too impossible for Luca to dare let himself imagine. Even the rare moments of _together_ he had with Robert seemed like a gift, a dream, far better than Luca deserved and far more than he had a right to expect. But _truly_ together _,_ for the rest of their lives…Luca lost his breath. He caught himself with palms flat against Robert's chest.

“But,” Luca began, voice a cracked whisper. He licked his lips. “But what if you _don't_ succeed?”

Robert shrugged. “I suppose that nothing of any great importance will be lost.” He spoke slowly, as though choosing his words with impeccable care.

Luca's fingers clenched involuntarily. He found himself gripping Robert's shirt with white-knuckled hands. “Is there danger?”

“I'd rather risk the danger than live with myself knowing I hadn't tried.”

The door opened; light pierced the shadows. The guard squinted in at them. “Time's up.”

Robert pulled Luca close and held him tight enough to bruise. Luca thought for a mad, fleeting moment they might sink into each other, become one creature with two lungs and a single heart that beat to the meter of their shared breath.

“I love you,” Robert murmured in Luca's ear. “Promise me you'll never forget that.”

“Never, Robert. Promise.”

Robert kissed him. It was a fierce, urgent kiss, more eloquent than anything either of them could say.

It was only when Robert was gone that Luca realized he hadn't said _I love you, too_. 


End file.
